Poetry Wednesday #65

I'm bringing back Poetry Wednesday!  For a while anyway.  The next several weeks will feature poems I wrote in middle and high school for my creative writing classes.  Some of these are really quite good.

Osawatomie State Hospital

This was written my freshman year. ~AJ

They Said I Was Crazy

Dark, empty halls
     of an abandoned asylum
     black-red with the blood of
     worthless, psychotic humans
     long since gone.
Dead bodies
     piled high in a room
     we can no longer get to–
     too many dead, can't open the door.
Another room filled,
     looking like it's going to
     burst—POP!—like a grotesque
     cartoon
Deep puddle of blood
     to swim in, to use as a pool.

Hotel of dementia–
Only me to keep myself company, and
Shadows dancing shadows
on the walls.
Trying to get rid
Of the souls of the damned,
Voices running past,
Singing their screams into my head.

The grandfather clock strikes thirteen–
That isn't even a number–
The candle brings the shadows and the
Voices again and again and again
And again and again and again and again
And again and again and again and sudden
SILENCE.

Poetry Wednesday #64

I'm bringing back Poetry Wednesday!  For a while anyway.  The next several weeks will feature poems I wrote in middle and high school for my creative writing classes.  Some of these are really quite good.

By Steve Kaiser from Seattle, US (WTO protests 10) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

I had to write and perform a rap for my poetry writing class my freshman year of high school.  This is it.  One day I'll tell you about the difficulties I had with this, but for today just enjoy the poem.  There are pieces here that work, but only pieces.  It's too bad.  Those pieces show promise.  ~AJ

"Cynical"

We live to survive, we survive to die.

We say we don't trick ourselves, but all we do is lie.

Lying,

Cheating,

Stealing,

Conning our way though life.

Running, running, running from death,

And what do we get for our strife?

We were dead before our lives began.

We're all dead before we die.

We were scared, so scared, and so we ran,

Thinking it'd prolong our lies.

As we ran we killed each other,

We killed our home, we killed our mother.

As we killed, we welcomed death,

We beckoned death, we embraced death.

Death scared us, and so we ran.

Running, killing, hiding, surviving,

That's what we do with our lives.

We live to survive, we survive to die.

We say we don't kill ourselves,

But all we do is lie.

Poetry Wednesday #63

I'm bringing back Poetry Wednesday!  For a while anyway.  The next several weeks will feature poems I wrote in middle and high school for my creative writing classes.  Some of these are really quite good.

This next poem I wrote for the boy I was "dating" my freshman year of high school.  Yes, the same boy I mentioned ever so briefly in the previous Poetry Wednesday.  I gave him my virginity and used him as my inspiration for this poem.

I don't know how I feel about that.  You'll understand once you read the poem.  It's . . . Well . . . 

I'm not sure I liked that boy very much.

~AJ

                Jon

Young girls in pigtails

Small reptilian creatures

Dead metal poles lying on the pained expressions

          of little boys

Healing a timely death

Just to go through it again

Powdered jellyfish in the form of Jesus Christ

Blue-haired women

Settling at a hard life's end

Living one more hour for old lovers' memory

Mud covered prick in a basket

Hungry cat eating the flesh of its master

Roses in an open grave covering the stench of the

           living for the dead

Armageddon and dry martinis

Starving children that could be fat

The rich toasting the depletion of the poor

Words lying sleeplessly on a paper doll's head

A loaded semi-automatic pistol floating dreamily in the air

The dangerous and holocaustal attitudes of opposing forces

A psychopath of 18 years

Graduating into cold reality

Destined to some day rule the world

Death, the beautiful lady,

Creeping closer to oblivion

Screams to hold on to the wounded

Poetry Wednesday #62

I'm bringing back Poetry Wednesday!  For a while anyway.  The next several weeks will feature poems I wrote in middle and high school for my creative writing classes.  Some of these are really quite good.

By Miguel Carrillo Villarreal [CC BY-SA 4.0],
via Wikimedia Commons

The following poem I know I wrote my freshman year of high school, because I wrote it for the first girl I had a crush on.  Laura.

Now, I mostly prefer men, but every so often a woman will come along who is just . . . breathtaking.  Laura was such a girl.  And she was lovely.

I went to an arts school for middle school and my freshman year of high school.  One I sorely missed after my family moved to the Kansas suburbs.  My school focus was writing and drama. I was confident and knew my own beauty in a way I haven't since, but the different arts didn't mix much, and Laura was both a dancer and a year ahead of me.

I never even talked to her.  Just watched her from afar.  I didn't have the courage, or the awareness, I guess.  Besides, I was dating a really cute boy.  Still, even though I haven't thought about her in decades–barely remembered her until I found this poem–I wish I had talked to her in high school.
~AJ


. . . For Laura

   Soft golden ribbons
Floating 
             Falling
                            Flying
Sweetly seductive             dancing
About heavenly shoulders—
      beautiful face
lighten a room
a soft glow of fire
Laughing eyes
Cat-like curves and angles

Grace in motion
      No restraints
Freedom at its finest

Poetry Wednesday #61

I'm bringing back Poetry Wednesday!  For a while anyway.  The next several weeks will feature poems I wrote in middle and high school for my creative writing classes.  Some of these are really quite good.

by A Vahanvaty from Dubai, UAE (Creepy Doll, Barnaul, Russia) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

This poem I actually have a date on: May 3, 1996.  So I would have been either a sophomore or senior in high school (I skipped my junior year).  It was originally typed on a typewriter, believe it or not!  There's a note at the beginning that reads, "inspiration-- short story "Miriam" by Truman Capote" It makes sense.  That creepy little tale was a favorite of mine.  Again, I'll try to recreate the formatting here.~AJ

       Miriam

Left alone

     Husband dead, gone. . . an old woman

Who doesn't realize that she is

     Lonely

     Beautiful young girl

          With almost white hair

And large eyes

Knowing, knowing

     Old eyes

Knowing, knowing

And pretty silk dresses

"What's your name, girl?"     "Miriam."

Poetry Wednesday #60

I'm bringing back Poetry Wednesday!  For a while anyway.  The next several weeks will feature poems I wrote in middle and high school for my creative writing classes.  Some of these are really quite good.

Edward Crawford returns a tear gas canister fired by police who were trying to disperse protesters in Ferguson, Mo.
 Aug. 13, 2014. Robert Cohen / St. Louis Post-Dispatch via Zuma Press
This is such an iconic image.  The strength of that man at that moment.

I want to say the following poem was actually written before high school.  I think in 7th or 8th grade. This would have been in 1993 maybe, '94?  I know it was after the '92 LA Riots, but only a year or two.  This was actually a really exciting find for me because I remember the first several lines, but not the rest and it's driven me crazy for decades!  It was originally written by hand on notebook paper, and I will try to recreate the vagaries of my handwriting and strange capitalization in my transcription below–it means something, you know? Anyway, enjoy. ~AJ


Lifetimes of Lifetimes
covered in STEEL
don't Believe
What they say is real
Life is Life
and widows cry
Who are you
to do and die
What is lost
can never be found
ALL is buried
deep underground
where the worms
wiggle and eat and crawl
The sons of daughters
Fall and Fall
Lost within her
deep despair
Old women pull
the young one's hair
Death is Death
and will live on
Until the coming
Of the sun's bright dawn
Nothing matters
and time moves on
that is the way
the world works.