Take a stand for your own.
Take it, make it your own.
Shape the unmade and bade it somehow stay.
A new form reborn is somehow torn
between elation and horror, changed.
I’m still resisting and reeling
against what is never the same and feeling
wrong.
Against identity
we strain to embody eternity
when all we can be is now.
Don’t know what I want
Teetering close to the edge
Afraid I’ll be pushed
–
Afraid I’ll miss the
opportunity to jump
climb up on my own
When past comes to the present,
and hindsight suddenly sheds light
on things long forgotten in the shadows,
how can I still stare into the night?
I take a step back to the sign
where once stood a crossroad I never saw.
Again today it stands, not the same but
I’m still in danger of wandering down some lane
without the slightest thought of choice.
We thought we’d fly to the next path
on the backs of dreams only to find
the ground comes up faster than it seems.
Those that were left behind were left to wonder
where their paths took them
while their own paths took them
to far shores, where it was hard to be sure
why and where the wonder was left.
Here we stand today, many miles but side by side
nestled in the hope of memory.
What we missed before won’t be missed again
and each other not missed again
and opportunity not missed again
and that crossroads not missed as
we turn to a new journey.
Let lead the way with hope that the night has passed
and cast aside our blindness at last.
If you’d said what you needed to say,
then your mind would be clear cut like
a lack of final forest for the
first funeral.
Broken blood vessels in faded hearts
forgotten lie among the memories made
rotten.
If I’d gotten any closer, I’d fall away.
If I’d made a move to stay,
the first would have faded to gray,
gotten laid to rest with the
past and rest.
If I’d held on tighter,
the day would cease getting righter and the
self would be lost to sea.
I see loss every time something is gained.
Something is taken from a.
The pain pauses with pleasure,
sides with whether or not that time
will be forgot or live as a legend
in someone’s eyes, through memories lie.
Life does not.
I’m glad these days I have not forgot
that life is for living.
Supple sighing under heavy, hot lying in
places pressing lower and ending slower,
down dripping into this ripple-ripping roar,
down into the core where it means more
than a soft sending that ends this ending
I attribute my writing to a natural result of reading so much, but the internet surely played a large role as well. I started writing once upon a time in the (then) magical land of Compuserve. Sure, before that I wrote long posts and emails and even sort of ‘message role played’- but it was just communicating thoughts and words. It didn’t occur to me that I was writing stories, poetry, and essays.
The lame story of how I figured this out was an encounter with a luser with the handle of “ForumRuler” mocking me even though he didn’t know me. I was about ten and not going to let it go. I had a “Well, I rule more than you do.” attitude and online persona. We went back and forth and finally he threw the gauntlet down. He challenged me to a contest of words. The rules were that we write a poem about our own awesomness. Who ever wrote the better one would be the true forum ruler. I think he was expecting an easy win because I was “Huh… never wrote a poem before”.
We were working something close to real time, both online, so I wrote:
You first hear footsteps,
Then the smile,
You know you will be dead,
In a little while,
You say why me?
You whine and run,
But you know what will happen,
She is the one,
She is the one I say,
The one you despise,
She is strong and charming,
and she is wise,
Whom is she you say,
Why has she come?
It doesn’t matter,
Your life is done.
He admitted it was ‘not bad’ having posted four lines of clever ‘roses are red I rule ‘n stuff’ and I never heard from him again. He probably had to change his handle and start over. I, on the other hand, found it very satisfying and started writing for the sake of writing actual works for the first time.
Notepad and I would sit down and write poems, story lines, dialogs, beginnings, middles, ends, and scenes. I wrote about taverns without ever have been drunk. I wrote about dueling with swords and sorcery, even though I’d never fenced. The real bits were always in the poetry and the characters. I only wrote about emotions, motivations, and interactions as I understood them. This was the a part of writing I fell in love with.
My true motivations for writing were somewhere between escape and expression. I felt better after all the jumbled thoughts in my head came out and made some sense on paper. Those thoughts didn’t have to be me, they became characters in far off worlds with much more important things to accomplish. They had much bigger trials to face.
The stories in my head were no longer just bedtime stories to myself after closing my eyes. They bore some sense of importance that I might one day get them down properly and share them with others.