Imitation, Parody, and All That Jazz

It has been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. To an extent, this may be true. I certainly find it heartwarming when my girls say things like, "when I grow up, I want to be just like you!" That I am a role model for these little people is amazing, and I aim to be a good example for them in everything I do.

This is also true for writing that I submit to publishers. I strive to send in my best because that is what I want to be known for. I want to set a bar for myself that even I have to stretch to reach. I think this is how any fledgling writer or artist feels. They want their work to be taken seriously, they want legitimate criticism, and they want feedback that allows them room for growth, rather than acid-like words that leave them withering in the dark confines of their defeat.

But when things come out in a way those artists or writers didn't expect, those words can be used against them. The concepts they attempted to introduce or discuss are picked apart by people who are out for one thing: attention. Of course, writers want attention for their work, and artists want attention for their paintings, sculptures, projects, what-have-you, but for someone else to incorrectly and haphazardly dissect your piece of intellectual property for the public to make a half-assed opinion on, that's just wrong. They're doing it for the ratings, while you're doing it for the sake of art or the sake of having something important to say.

Sometimes these aren't even pieces of huge impact. Look at Rebecca Black's "Friday" single that blazed across the World Wide Web like wildfire. All the girl wanted was a little fun, to have an experience. That people took her work to make fun of her and make rash judgments about the music industry being decimated by talentless bags of money with nothing better to do is sickening. That girl will never live down that experience, and it will follow her forever. From that moment on, pretty much anything she decides to do with her life will be shadowed by the parodies that will taunt her for the rest of her life.

I was thinking about this last week, while scrolling through Facebook and hearing several different versions of the classic Christmas poem, The Night Before Christmas. (Or, as originally titled, "A Visit from Saint Nick.) The man who wrote the poem, Clement Clarke Moore, wrote that piece for his children. That it became a deeply rooted Christmas tradition for many families is a wonderful thing, and the most that any writer could hope for. However, I have a feeling Mr. Moore would be shuddering in his grave at the idea that our children are now hearing versions such as the Redneck Night Before Christmas, or the Politically Correct version. 

http://www.appleseeds.org/twas-night_vers.htm  Politically Correct and many other versions

http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_dec2003/Redneck_Christmas.htm Redneck version

Sure, it's funny. A little. But what those parody writers are failing to recognize when they do things like this, those poems are what we are being left with, while the originals are fading back to traditions we're letting go of. I think it is abominable when the pieces that make fun of other work becomes more popular than the original itself. 

If I am ever published, I hope that my poems are the stuff of romance novels. I hope that people quote me in their love notes. I hope they write them on the bathroom mirror for their significant other to find when they step out of the shower. I hope they strum the heartstrings I plucked those words from. 

Quote me to your heart's content, but don't steal, then twist, my words for the sake of a laugh. Don't insult me, or other writers who poured their hearts and souls into their work. 

It is one thing to imitate work you admire. I find myself being influenced by many different writers. I use elements of other artists/poets techniques and styles to mold my own writing. I feel like this is the best way to flatter those writers. 

And if you're out to insult them, then you're a jerk, and I hope you got a big ol' lump of coal in your stocking.



This is my last post for 2013! It's been a fun start to this writing blog, and I look forward to a new year filled with amazing words, beautiful lyrics, and lots and lots of acceptance letters! Or even one or two! Hope your new year is filled with as much love and optimism as mine. xoxo : )

Words in Space and Time

Wow, this year is already coming to a close. I can’t believe how fast time has flown in 2013, and yet, I look back on all that has happened in my life this year and can’t believe it’s only been a year! At the beginning of the year, we were blessed with our little rock star Rory Gibson. Over the past ten months, I’ve watched him grow and learn and blossom into the bloomin’ little sunburst he is today. I’ve received promotions at work and I’ve made great strides in school, putting another three quarters under my belt. Only three more (or so) to go! The girls have grown, not just taller, but I can see how much they’ve changed since our family dynamic has changed, and at some point in the next two weeks, I guess I need to sit down and really take a look at what’s going on around me… because life is flying by, and it feels like, one more blink…and it will all be a thing of the past.

I’ve started submitting pieces for publishing this year. This was the first year that I've really paid attention to reading periods and publishing houses and magazines, and the first year that I've had the courage inside myself to put my words out there for others to read. This is the first year I've attempted to work as a writer. This is the first year I've written a resume in the hopes of finding a job that requires a pen and excellent grammar. This is the first year I’ve read my poetry in public – and I loved it! This is the first year I’ve allowed myself to explore this possibility of having pages with my words on them in other people’s hands.

At the end of last year, my fair ginger lover and I took a trip down to Naples, Florida to see his family. I had never met any of them before except his father, George. (Whom we should have named our son after, but I stubbornly held out for Rory so as not to doom our son with a little old man’s name for his entire life, which was subsequently made completely awesome by the royal couple naming the future king after him instead. So I’ll just say that I gave Kate and Wills the name and opted for naming mine after the Last Centurion, the last part of which was absolutely true.) 

While we were down there, we met some super groovy people and I completely and utterly fell in love with the place. The beachy vibe, the slower pace, the wonderful strangers who embraced me without knowing my name or story. I played bongos on the beach and knocked off so many things off my Bucket List, it was insane.

Then I came home, kicking and screaming the entire way. I haven’t stopped missing it, and I haven’t stopped fantasizing about a nice little ranch under the palm trees, somewhere only a bike ride away from the ocean. I could live that life, drumming on the river with a group of old hippies, getting my groove on and throwing my words out into a corner of the Universe that still wants to hear them.

It was the end of December, and yet, I forgot more than once while I was down there, what day it actually was. I forgot what month it was – because it felt like summer and not just because of the weather. The atmosphere down there was just so damn cool.

Well, I’m still in Michigan. There are too many things holding me here right now. Work, school, a home I like with a landlord who is pretty awesome, if I were to rate him as a landlord. I have family here, and my girls are here – and so are their fathers. So, Michigan it is right now. But here’s the issue: I still crave that creative space!

With three kids and a Labrador, my house is not the most peaceful place to be all the time. It seems that when the mood to write strikes me, everyone is home and the volume is full blast. Throw in the noisy neighbors, the traffic noise from being the middle street between two major roadways in town, and the constant wail of sirens (I wouldn’t say I live in the “hood,” but I can definitely see it from my front porch!) and it is a bit obvious that this environment isn’t exactly conducive to creativity.

So what’s a girl to do?

I like to think I’m pretty efficient. I’m a big multi-tasker and I don’t like to make two trips. (Ask anyone on a Sunday morning at Bob’s while I’m carrying two trays piled high with breakfasts.) So I’ve taken to keeping a Memo app on my phone’s homepage, and now I have a little notepad wherever the mood strikes me! There are just too many things that fly through my head at any given moment that are too good to let go. Sometimes I just have to stop and write it down.

Many times, I’ll come up with things as I’m driving. I can’t exactly stop and whip out my pen and paper, or even get my phone out to jot down a quick memo. In those cases, I try to repeat it to myself over and over again, or expand it into a song so I can keep it in my memory. Sometimes I’ll get really into it and start narrating an entire story to myself. As soon as I get to my destination, I stop, scribble down the good parts in my server book or cell phone and continue on my merry way.

I forget these little notes sometimes. I forget them, tucked away in drawers and glove boxes, slid between pages and piles of papers. (I tell myself not to end up like my mother, and I always seem to tell this to myself as I’m doing something she would do, like rearranging large piles of junk mail into smaller piles tucked into other piles of mail. Weird.) I find them months later, sometimes years, and it’s amazing how easy it is to go back and remember what I felt in that moment.

It’s awe-inspiring, how words on a page can change a mood, can transport someone through time and space. It’s really cool to think about how powerful words can be. They can change the environment, they can change the mood, they can change the way people feel, act and think. Words are agents of change and I want to make changes. I want to make words worth reading, worth making a change for.

I guess I don’t really have a theme for this week’s update, but if you get a message out of this post, let it be this: Words are the lightest things we pack ourselves with when we venture out into the waking world, and sometimes, they have the heaviest weight. You can take them everywhere, but you can’t just use any of them anywhere. If you don’t have a place for your words, tuck them away in the piles of junk mail in your mind and come back to them later. Hold on to the good stuff.

Where is your creative space? Where do you find your inspiration? When you’re in the middle of something and the creative lightning bolt hits you, how do you cope with the awesomeness of it all? What’s your sorting system for holding it all together?

Please comment and share ideas and thoughts. I’m so thankful for anyone who reads my words, but feedback is so greatly appreciated!

Thanks, all. Have a fabulous week. xoxo : )

Music to My Ears

Sometimes, the best poems are not meant as poems at all. They are intended for ears rather than eyes, but still aimed at the heart. There are some songs that, when read aloud, one wouldn’t think it was ever set to music unless they’d heard it.

This week was finals week at my college, and in my Oral Communication class taught by the very talented Cristina Trapani-Scott, our final was an interpretive reading. I haven’t done a reading like this, save for my one (and only, so far) poetry reading, since high school Theatre Arts class. This was a fun way to finish the class, and I got to hear some really interesting stuff, including some of my favorites, like Edgar Allen Poe’s “Annabel Lee,” which is a classic interpretive reading piece.

Nobody read Edna St. Vincent Millay, though. I was a little disappointed.

What I did hear, however, were a lot of songs. I heard a lot of music in the words, but not even the music it was set to for the radio. There were a handful of really good interpretations of these pieces that I wouldn’t have associated with the words otherwise.

I can say this – I won’t hear “Stairway to Heaven” the same way ever again. I love Led Zeppelin, and I unabashedly love this song. I don’t think much about the lyrics while it’s playing in the car, though. Maybe because it’s an eight minute song, it just starts to blur into throbbing guitar and whimsical storytelling tones. That’s what happens for me, and for most Zeppelin music. The words are somehow lost in the “muchness” of the whole. After this class, though, I feel like I have a better connection with the song because I’ve heard the lyrics written as I feel they were originally written: as a poem.

A great example of a songwriter who makes beautiful music with lyrics that seem better equipped for poetry is Tom Waits. I love the way his voice growls, rambling on into tangents and bringing real personality to his work. “Kentucky Avenue” is one of my very favorite songs and I love the way the lyrics tumble out. You can really imagine him as a bright-eyed smart-mouthed kid. When I first discovered this song, everyone was citing it as a love song. But check out the words:

“Kentucky Avenue” by Tom Waits

Eddie Graces Buick got 4 bullet holes in the side
Charlie De lisle sittin' at the top of an avocado tree
Mrs Storm'll stab you with a steak knife if you step on her lawn
I got a half pack of lucky strikes man, come along with me

Let's fill our pockets with macadamia nuts
Then go over to Bobby Goodmansons and jump off the roof
Hilda plays strip poker and her mama's across the street
Joey Navinski says, "She put her tongue in his mouth"

Dicky Faulkner's got a switchblade and some goose neck risers
That eucalyptus is a hunchback, there's a wind up from the south
Let me tie you up with kite string and I'll show you the scabs on my knee

Watch out for the broken glass, put your shoes and socks on
And come along with me

Let’s follow that fire track, I think your house is burnin' down
Then go down to the hobo jungle and kill some rattle, snakes with a trowel
We'll break all the windows in the old Anderson place
And steal a bunch of boysenberrys and smear 'em on our face

I'll get a dollar from my mama's purse
And buy that skull and crossbones ring
And you can wear it around your neck on an old piece of string
Then we'll spit on Ronnie Arnold and flip him the bird
And slash the tires on the school bus now don't say a word

I'll take a rusty nail and scratch your initials on my arm
And I'll show you how to sneak up on the roof of the drugstore
I'll take those spokes from your wheelchair and a magpies wings
And I'll tie 'em to your shoulders and your feet

I'll steal a hacksaw from my dad and cut the braces off your legs
And we'll bury them tonight load in the cornfield
Just put a church key in your pocket, we'll hop that freight train in the hall
We'll slide all the way down the drain to New Orleans in the fall.

Is it the words, or the melody, that makes the song? I think this can be argued in both directions, really. Sometimes, the song is worth more in music than it is in words. I feel this way about rap sometimes. I can’t always follow the lyrics, maybe because I literally can’t keep up, or because I can’t identify with them (I’m a little white girl, I don’t know much about bitches and money) but the melody keeps me tuned into the station. So let’s not discount it entirely, because I think that’s where a lot of rap comes from, too. It starts as poetry, evolves into spoken word, and once a track is put behind it, there’s the magic formula that sells.

If you know me, you know I can't waste any opportunity to plug my absolute favorite rock band of all time, NIRVANA. There are several examples in their discography like this. Kurt Cobain is a often-quoted lyricist, and often ridiculed for his writing style. Which is funny, because he would be the first to admit that his writing style lacks style at all. He used to say that he didn't much care about the lyrics, as long as the music made sense. This is how we ended up with such lyrical gems such as "aqua sea foam shame."

(Which actually does mean something, by the way. In his journals, Cobain wrote of the side effects of heroin, one of which was a fuzzy sea-foam green blur over his vision. So, consider yourself educated!)

Have you ever heard a song that had such lyrics you’d think they were a poem? There’s a basic formula to write a song. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus. You can take a few, leave a few, but those are the basic parts. Some of my favorite songs are the ones that break away from this pattern. It’s pretty recognizable when someone reads a song aloud as a poem. But sometimes, it’s not. Sometimes, a song is so well-written that it stands alone as poetry, and today, I celebrate poetic music. (And my sister’s birthday – Happy Birthday, Katelyn!)

Which musical poems (or poetic songs) are your favorites? Please comment!

Thanks for reading, and ya’ll have a great week. xoxo : )

Why Write?

Hi loves! So glad you made it back for week eleven of The Saturday Evening Poet! I've gone over a few different lessons over the past couple of weeks, and while that's all fine and dandy, I think we're going to go in a different direction this week and just chat a bit about why I write.

I love to write; I love poetry and prose, short stories, flash fiction, pretty things. I love a beautiful sentiment put to simple words. Sometimes the riddle of our feelings is put together so simply that I have to go back and question myself after reading them. Sometimes someone just puts the words together in such a way that makes me think, "yes - THIS."

I wrote a few weeks ago about my new fave poet, Lang Leav, out of Sydney, Australia. I love the way she is able to take simple words and phrases, and put them together so stoically, so quietly, and yet speak volumes with them. It is a height of talent that I aim my stretch towards.

Some people build things, like houses or machines or even sandwiches. I like to build emotions. I like to be the reason there are tears behind your eyes. I like to be the tug at your heart, the small smile you didn't realize was blooming on your face. I like to bring words to the stage of paper and let them flail about passionately, zealously, even, in the spotlight of the reader's eyes. 

Each line I write on a page is a direct representation of my inner child doing a wild pirouette. Look at me! I cry, look what I have made for you! I want to be seen for something, seen as something, recognized for something - and I'd like those somethings to be something I can be proud of. I want to be proud of my words, and I want others to know them, remember them, recite them and share them. I want others to know my work and aspire to write such words. I want to be a good poet - and I think the wanting is half the battle. Writing is such a personal journey, a war within oneself. The battle against time, procrastination, the mental blockage, fear and maybe even shame... all of these can be overcome by sitting down and forcing oneself to 

just.

put the words.

on the page.

JUST PUT THE WORDS ON THE PAGE, DAMMIT.

But which words? Which ones are the right ones? Which ones are the best? Who matters more, the reader or the writer? Do I want your opinion? Do you want mine? Do I want you to want mine? Once they're out, they don't come back. Bullets of the fiercest caliber, so choose wisely.

Most of the time, I write for catharsis. There's something built up inside that needs to be freed. Sometimes it's pain, sometimes it's the rush of that giddy roller coaster ride between the first kiss and the last. I like to write in tribute to others. I like to write to frame the moment on a page so I can go back and remember what that moment felt like. 

I wouldn't go so far as to call my memory eidetic, but it has been called remarkable. I can remember moments, certain snippets of conversation, the chill of the air, the look on someone's face, the way my heart dropped or soared. I can remember the thought in my head at the time, or the spot on the wall or whatever it was that I focused on so as not to focus on the trauma of the moment. 

I write to remember, not just for me but for others to do so as well. I write so that people will know, and maybe when I'm gone, they'll reanalyze their preconceived notions about me or what I wrote, and my writing will truly have a purpose - to make someone think. I write to inform, but not just to teach or to educate. I write to announce, to share, to think aloud, in a way. I write to make moments that shouldn't be forgotten, unforgettable.

I think some of some pieces of poetry like tattoos. Shredding skin with every painful word being brought up from under the surface, laying feelings out on a canvas in an intricate design. When it's over, you feel like you've been through something. It's an experience. I feel like, when I'm sitting in the chair listening to the buzz, knowing it's literally tearing apart what God created so as to make way for my own design, I'm the one in power. I'm the one controlling that tiny fragment of the Universe, and damn, does it feel good.

I have nine tattoos, and I can tell you a story about every one. I can tell you what it means to me, what I went through to mentally earn it, how I came to decide on the design of it, the reactions of the artists when I explained what I wanted, and the feeling of closure that comes when the needle finally hits my skin and I get that surge of adrenaline that tells me, "you went through THAT, you can get through THIS. If you get through THIS, then THAT will be worth the pain."

When the book comes out, that will be the ultimate tattoo. That will be the graffiti I want to leave on the world. I just want something that says, "Shannon was here."

What do you write for? Ask yourself and answer honestly - what is your motivation? If it is good, go for it. Hell, even if it isn't, go for it anyway. I'm not in the business of crushing dreams. I'm here to write about them.

xoxo :)

Contrasts and Opposites

Thanksgiving and Black Friday – these are two consecutive days that go hand-in-hand. Lately, it seems as if these two days are being treated as twin days, much like the large double doors at the front of a smart shop with great sales, am I right? These two days usher in the holiday shopping season and for me, this is where I draw the line at Christmas music around my house. My girls are huge Christmas music fans and if not kept in rein, might sing carols into July. I think Christmas needs to just cool its heels and allow Halloween and Thanksgiving their proper due, too, that’s all. So we don’t really do the Christmas cheer thing until after Thanksgiving.

Funnily enough, that’s when everyone else seems to start their holiday freak-out, too. So Black Friday has turned into a race to open, a race to sales, a race for the highest profit. It has become a race for the best thing, a competition to BE THE FIRST, THE BEST, THE WINNER, and this is true for consumers as well as the corporations feeding the frenzy with their earlier-and-earlier openings.

This Black Friday creep into Thanksgiving has put me in a sour mood. It has changed the traditions of Thanksgiving from it being a day to bask in our blessings to a day we race through our conversations and our meals, we skip the pie and coffee and find ourselves freezing our asses off outside a mall, plotting the self-indulgent takeover by way of ruthless consumerism while the “crazy” people sit inside watching the football game surrounded by the warmth of family and friends.

This has created such a contrast in meanings. Those twin days ushering in the holiday season have turned into the worst type of fraternal twin: the good and the evil. Why is it that one day can be about giving so much thanks, and the very next day be about the complete opposite? It feels as if we are all running a similar track of “bi-polarity,” as I call it. We switch gears as quickly as we flip a light switch.

In life, this makes me sad. In writing, I find it a pleasant challenge. How does one present contrast in a poem?

It can be done obviously, with opposite words. It can be structured like this example, a limerick my grandfather likes to recite:

I went to the show, tomorrow
Took a front seat, in the back.
I fell from the basement to the balcony,
And I broke the front of my back.

Even though the poem didn’t make much sense, it is still a good poem. It still had good rhythm and is still memorable. I love this about poetry – you can use any words, mash them together, carve them into something, and voila! You have something. I don’t think there’s really such a thing as a “bad” poem unless it isn’t cared about, and I think that as long as someone goes through the trouble to think it up and write it down, there’s some degree of care put into it.

That limerick is one example, and it isn’t subtle about the opposite words. In other contrast poems, the words themselves may not be the contrasting element of the piece. It may be in the title, which beckons the reader through a door where they find the other side isn’t what they expected. My fair ginger lover pointed out a great example of that to me today – a song with sad lyrics, written to a happy tune. “Any David Bowie song, really,” he said. Another example I came up with is a song that was popular a few years back, “Into the Ocean” by Blue October. A catchy melody, one that sticks to the short-term memory in that way that makes you hum the chorus for the rest of the day, but listen to the words. The guy is talking about committing (or attempting to commit) suicide. That’s not really something I would expect to want to turn up in the car on my way to work. Such a buzzkill, but open for other interpretations because of the tune. If you don’t listen to the words, it’s a really happy song. If you keep to the melody, or the “beat” of the poem, without absorbing the words too much, it can work this way with poetry as well. The contrast comes between what the reader expects the poem will be about, and what the poem is actually about.

A great example of this is a poem called “Flowers” by Dennis Roy Craig. He talks of not knowing the names of the flowers because of his upbringing; he grew up in a desolate concrete jungle where flowers did not grow. The vision we are given in the poem is a sad, dirty industrial one devoid of color and joy. When the speaker finally encounters flowers, the joy they bring him is so great he does not need to give it a name.

FLOWERSWritten by Dennis Roy Craig
I have never learnt the names of flowers.
From beginning, my world has been a place
Of pot-holed streets where thick, sluggish gutters race
In slow time, away from garbage heaps and sewers
Past blanched old houses around which cowers
Stagnant earth. There, scarce green thing grew to chase
The dull-grey squalor of sick dust; no trace
Of plant save few sparse weeds; just these, no flowers.
One day, they cleared a space and made a park
There in the city’s slums; and suddenly
Came stark glory like lighting in the dark,
While perfume and bright petals thundered slowly.
I learnt no names, but hue, shape and scent mark
My mind, even now, with symbols holy.

This poem is how I have viewed this kickoff-to-holiday-season weekend, in a way. First, a wonderful day of family, friends, humility and maybe a little bit of gluttony, with a day of selfish greed and utter consumerism, this gimmegimme mine-mine-mine attitude hot on its heels. Black Friday has become such a rude tradition that it has eroded the celebration and even the meaning of Thanksgiving.

This year, I had to work for a few hours, and it wasn’t bad. I was able to come home and chill out with my husband and my son, and we stayed inside and watched crap on the television and ate frozen food out of cardboard boxes for our harvest feast. It was a wonderful day. It gave me time to consider all that I am thankful for, and this year, I have one more thing to be thankful for: the opportunity to share my words with others. For that, thank you fine readers who check out my blog every Saturday evening.

And as always, I am thankful for poetry. For words, for the music behind them, and for the feelings and memories they evoke. I am thankful for poets who came before me, and thankful for the chance to become one of them.

Have a fantastic week, and remember to take a moment each day and remember what you’re thankful for!

xoxo :)

Our Favorite Words - Mad Lib Style!

Now THIS is flippin' cool. THIS is my newest obsession, my new Candy Crush. I am so excited to have discovered this, and I am SUPER stoked to share this with you. If it isn't something that is already taking the world by storm, then it should be. Hey word junkies and language geeks out there: get a kick out of the MOST EPIC NEW THING IN POETRY:

*drumroll please!*

AUTOCORRECT POETRY.

I'm sure you're all familiar with AutoCorrect. Even those who are still carrying around those dinosaur flip phones, or - gasp! - a candy bar phone, you'll know what AutoCorrect does. It turns completely innocent text messages into great fodder for conversation later, inside jokes, and now, amazing works of writing.

What I like about the concept of AutoCorrect poetry is that it has no form, it has no style. It is freewriting in our most modern form. It is mobile poetry. There is no longer any excuse for not having the time to write poetry. If you can text, you can create!

I had been mulling this over in my mind for a while now, and the other day I voiced my ideas to my fair ginger lover. We turned it into a bit of a game, to see who could come up with the better text, based on how hard we laughed at it. We spent the next half hour in a sort of texting date, writing hilarious and completely nonsensical things to each other and giggling like children. We probably looked so stupid, sitting there on our phones, snorting into our sleeves with laughter.

I noticed while doing this that my AutoCorrect sometimes repeated words I had already used, like it was on a loop of words in a bank. Where did these words come from? From the person holding it, of course, which is me - and I realized that these aren't just funny words. These are my favorite words. These are the words I use most often because they are the ones that are most familiar to my tongue. The way they roll off and clamber about the Universe after jumping out of my brain - those are the ones I reach for most often.

What words do you reach for? What words are in your vernacular? How do you expand your vocabulary? I recently discovered this great Facebook app called "Word Porn" (excuse the title) and while I'm not one who really gets into the "sharing" of all those random Page pictures and cutesy sayings and whatnot, I find myself sharing a lot of these updates because these words are just... splendiferous.

In three days, I was introduced to, like, FIVE of my new favorite words. My first new favorite word was a word I wish I had known in fourth grade when we wrote and submitted orally a paper on what we wanted to be when we grew up. If you know me personally, then you know what my aspirations were back then. Innocent as they truly were, they were absolutely scandalous that day in my fourth grade classroom.

Keep reading. Maybe I'll tell you the story.

This is such a great word - a word to describe me perfectly. Not me as a complex, complete being, but the essential Me. The word is "quaintrelle." The definition is I take this one at face value - I realize that it is to mean the female counterpart to a dandy British male, and that is not as I mean it. But read the definition and interpret it for yourselves, and I think you will realize what I'm trying to say.
"A woman who emphasizes a life of passion expressed through personal style, leisurely pastimes, charm and cultivation of life's pleasures."

Another one I really enjoy is "heliopheliac." One who basks in sunshine, and is reluctant to leave it.

Another is scripturient - having a consuming passion to write. Oh, how that one fits me so well.

I love this one, this is probably one of my very favorite new words, "retrouvaille" which means rediscovery, the joy of finding a loved one after a long separation.

And balter. Because that is hilarious. It is pronounced like "falter" and it isn't far off. It means to WAVE YO HANDS IN THE AY-ER LIKE YOU JUST DON'T CAY-ER. It is the stuff of that thankfully lost video of my wedding night after the third? pub of the crawl... one very, very happy bride very much enjoying her new status as Mrs. Fair Ginger Lover. "To dance artlessly without particular grace or skill, but usually with enjoyment." Just hearing the word makes me giggle.

Which brings me to the best part - the part of the evening where you learn how to write your very own AutoCorrect poems! Hope your seams are double stitched.

Also, be warned - I apparently have a sailor's vernacular because my phone allows my AutoCorrect to swear.

Fuck the bus stop!
She is super proud
of my birthday party.
And,
she would love Mondays.

I would absolutely love to do this as spoken word, as slam poetry. I think it would be hilarious. Just me and a spotlight, deadpanning for the audience. I want to make this happen! Here's another good one.

For example,
a little ridiculous,
and the grocery shopping cart system -
it's not connecting with his toes!
I don't want the baby giving them
to the store in the Middle East.

I noticed that a lot of my little poems ended up being about the baby. My little Muse. He is his father's son in so many ways. Love that little bundle of joy from the ends of his wispy blonde hair to the tips of his tiny little toes, but sometimes, I think my AutoCorrect captures my worst 3 AM moments. For example:

Give me a good day sweetie.
Try to get rid of them,
in their fucking frustration,
by throwing out the baby.
(wow, I must have been really, um, tired.)

My phone is very Smart. It keeps up with current events. For the most part. It's a little behind, but I still give it credit for knowing that Carlos is always to be associated with Danger.

Carlos Danger is not connecting
a little more sweetie Love
to the midnight showing.
We need an experienced programmer
who has been CRAZY
about my teeth.

This is one from my husband's AutoCorrect - and I took it personally, it was that sweet.

Thus the baby happy,
and the fantastic four of us
to come home to

and snuggle - with you,
though I love you more

than any Hostess cake.

Aww.

Try it. Let's start a new thing. Send an AutoCorrect Poem (ACP) text or post to someone and see how they react! When you get the inevitable "WTF?" explain the concept, and enjoy the hilarity.

Comment or submit your own AutoCorrect poem, thanks SO VERY MUCH for coming back to read this week, and please share and pin and +1 the crap out of The Saturday Evening Poet! I want my words to reach every furthest corner. I appreciate every like and share and click and skim. I thank you so very, very much and hope you have a great week.

xoxo :)

Oh, fine. Because you were kind enough to read to the end, I'll tell you what happened in fourth grade.

I didn't have such a refined vocabulary back then. (Where were you, Word Porn?) We were given an assignment to write a paper on what we wanted to be when we grew up. I didn't know the word "choreographer." I was also not familiar with the term "interpretive dancer." All I knew is that out there somewhere, according to my Highlights for Children magazine, there were people who got paid to make up funky dances and teach them to people. I wanted to get paid for getting my groove on! I tried to think of the most technical term I could come up with for "funky" because that probably wasn't anywhere near a list of occupations. I chose the most elegant sounding word, "exotic."

Thus, my paper, which was presented via speech to the class, which was in full attendance that day, including the boy I had a crush on who sat in the front row right in front of where I was standing, became a speech on how I wanted to grow up to become an exotic dancer.

You're welcome, and I'm very sorry if you were drinking anything. :)

Polaroid Poetry

It feels like the weeks are flying by! I'm convinced that as we get older, time passes faster. Years that once crawled by are now speeding past me like a blurry bullet of days I get through only to forget them. My "new" baby is almost 9 months now, and my girls will be on Christmas break in a month, and then on to the second half of the school year. Winter is almost here - it gets closer every day - and the holidays are rushing up to this last-second shopper (last-second everything, honestly) like the guy who WANTS THE BALL. Before I know it, I'm going to be back to doing it all in 2014.

For the past seven weeks (and for another month) I've had a crazy busy schedule. Three classes, work five days a week, three kids, a fair ginger lover, at least five submissions to literary magazines and I've recently launched a full-on effort to find freelance work to gain employable writing experience. I'm ready to share my words and ready to bring my editing skills to the right people, for the right price, of course. At this point, my price is experience, so get your edits and proofreads in now while I'm still broke and humble!

I kid. I'm just... I'm ready to be part of something bigger.

Right now, it's a little ridiculous. But I'm loving it, thriving in the chaos and satisfaction of taking on so much ambition. It's the most productive environment I could be in. Starting in January, I'll be back to online classes (the same ones I swear I'll never take again, every term) so I'll have more time to work, more time to rake in that cabbage. Cabbage. God, I love fun words! My goal, however, is not to have to run for it, so much, but to make more of an effort to put my name "out there" and let the cabbage float to me.

However, I know that is completely unreliable and I don't plan on depending upon pretty words to pay the rent, so I'll be turning more tables, too, I'm sure.

My point, as long as it has taken me to get to it, is that life is crazy and it's flying by. It doesn't wait for you, and it doesn't allow you to take the scenic route unless you make the effort to slow down and look for yourself. Don't let it slip through your fingers. Don't lose the moments through the blur of the passing weeks. Stop and smell the roses, and write a poem about it!

I like to think of poems, especially the short and sweet ones I like to write, as Polaroids of our lives. They're quick snapshots of what we felt in those moments. I can remember things I wanted to remember, but unless I write them down, I don't remember what those things I wanted to remember were, only that I wanted to remember them.

I've recently found a poet who captures moments like this so perfectly. I discovered her on Pinterest, actually, but she's got a Facebook page that's gaining more "likes" every day. She hails from Sydney and is currently hanging out in Singapore, promoting her amazing book Love and Misadventure. Her name is Lang Leav, and what I love about her work is the style in which she writes. Our styles are very similar, and she writes about what she knows, the most exquisite feelings us normal people feel without having words to put to them. She puts her feelings, those moments shared between lovers, into such simple terms that not only can we understand what she's trying to convey, but we can feel almost like we're there, like we're the lover, or we're the loved one, and for me, at least, it feels like she's taken the words right out of my soul and put them on paper. I wish I had found those words in high school, rather than have the hassle of the last nine years and countless adversities to get through before finding the happiness I have today! She is the cure for what I recently found out was actually a word - that difficulty or inability to describe emotions as we feel them - alexithymia. What I love most about Leav's poetry is that she has a way of picking out the smallest moments and blowing them up so we can see the beauty in them. She forces us to slow down and enjoy the moment in the minute, the hour, the experience. Her voice speaks the volumes that still sit on the shelves in my heart. I admire her words and I'd like to share a few of my favorite examples with you.

Xs and Os

Love is a game
Of tic-tac-toe,
Constantly waiting, 
For the next X or O.


LOVE LETTERS

Every letter
   That she types,
    Every keystroke
    That she strikes
To spell your name
   again and again
   is all she ever 
   wants to write.


CLOSURE

Like time suspended,
   A wound unmended
   You and I.

We had no ending,
   Said no goodbye.

For all my life,
   I'll wonder why.


Tell me, ladies... tell me that you didn't just swallow a lump in your throat as you got angry for a second at the bitch who just stole your words. Was that just me? When I first started reading Lang Leav's poetry, I was almost furious. I felt like Billy Crystal in Throw Momma From the Train in the scene where Anne Ramsay just figured out the word Billy Crystal's character had been fumbling for through the entire film. I wanted to find this lovely Aussie Asian woman and steal my words back. As I read further, I just fell further and further in love with what she wrote about - because she works the same way I do. She found her Muse and celebrates him with every syllable. While the subject of her poetry is usually the same, she writes it in such a way that makes each piece new, and makes us read it in a way we hadn't thought to think of it before. Love is complex enough as it is - and I thank Lang Leav for finding the words to unravel the confusion and put it in simple terms for us.

Thank you so much for coming back this week. Please enjoy each and every moment of the next week until we meet again. xoxo :)



Leav, L. (2013). Love and misadventure. Andrews McMeel Publishing. Kansas City, Missouri. 

Silver, S. (1987). Throw momma from the train. Orion Pictures Corporation. Los Angeles, California. 

Making a List, Checking it Twice

So we've barely passed Halloween and we're already being inundated with sleigh bells ringing and carolers singing. It seems like the holidays come a little bit sooner every year. One big part of the holiday season, for me, at least, is the list making. Oh, how many notebooks I could go through between November and January, planning parties and cookies and presents and making Christmas lists with my kids... lists are one of my favorite parts of the season because, well, because I'm more than a little OCD and it helps me to keep track of an otherwise clusterf$^%*ed couple of weeks.

But how does this relate to poetry? Well, it could be argued, I suppose, that you could turn any list into a poem, not that there's anything especially poetic about eggs, milk, cheese, but hey, if you can think it, do it!

"Don't dream it - be it!" (Rocky Horror Picture Show)

Had to throw it in there - I highly enjoyed my birthday experience the week before last.

But it can be argued that any good poem can start with a list. Make a list of your favorite things. Line them up and watch them expand on the paper. Instead of saying so much with so little, watch how much those little things say and let the words come out between the things that aren't said.

There's no special name for it, like sonnet, or pantoum. They are simply called "list poems" and the beauty is in the simplicity. 

Eggs, milk, cheese.

Crack, pour, grate.

Splash, melt, sizzle

Chew, taste, enjoy.

Breakfast.

Okay, well, I guess we could do something with eggs, milk, and cheese, so my rude assumption that nothing could be done with a grocery list is now out the window. But let's do better than that.

There are two ways I like to write list poems. The first is through repetition. The second is through fact-gathering to come to a conclusion.

Let's try this on repeat. I first tried my hand at list poems in 2008 in Professor Fanning's class at CMU. Forgive me, I learned some great techniques and love referring to things I learned in that class. He used an example called "My Car" by Raymond Carver. This is SUCH a great writing prompt, and so simple. I do hope you'll use it in your own writing endeavors.

I would like to share with you today, my response to this type of list poem. I repeated the phrase "The dog who" to introduce to you one of my best, best friends in the entire Universe who has since gone over the Rainbow Bridge. Her name was KayCee Lou.

ODE TO KAYCEE LOU

The dog who was a diva.

The dog whose ears were crimped.

The dog who ate pizza crusts.

The dog who never barked.

The dog who greeted visitors.

The dog who was liberal with kisses.

The dog who was a surprise.

The dog who chewed her paws.

The dog who rolled in the grass.

The dog who waited for the school bus.

The dog whose tail was immense.

The dog who teethed on rocks.

The dog who never bit.

The dog who watched the fish tank.

The dog who didn't sit pretty -

The dog who sat beautiful.

The dog who ate off a fork.

The dog who loved the bathtub.

The dog who demolished snowballs.

The dog who got high with me.

The dog who watched soap operas on sick days.

The dog who kept my secrets.

The dog who ate Oreos after the breakup.

The dog who finished off daiquiris.

The dog who trailed mud through the kitchen.

The dog whose nose was never rubbed in it.

The dog who took her time.

The dog who never challenged my opinion.

The dog who protected me.

The dog who birthed thirty one.

The dog who mothered twenty eight.

The dog who comforted me through contractions.

The dog who babysat and let me nap.

The dog whose hair matched mine.

The dog whose collar was purple.

The dog who never needed a leash.

The dog who knew her place.

The dog whose place was at my side.

The dog who flopped.

The dog who was "voluptuous."

The dog the vet called fat.

The dog who peed on the vet.

The dog who missed me.

The dog who slept at my feet.

The dog who kept me warm.

The dog who never rolled her eyes.

The dog whose fur choked the vacuum.

The dog whose nose turned white.

The dog who made the house a home.

The dog who answered to Mama, Queenie, Lady and Baby.

The dog who hated my ex.

The dog who knew best.

The dog who listened to NIRVANA.

The dog with good taste.

The dog who never judged.

The dog whose fur was golden.

The dog whose heart was golden.

The dog who loved me.

The dog I loved.

In repetition, the poem stays together. "The dog who" acts as glue while the various line endings give you all sorts of images about what sort of dog she was. The best part is that this can be done with anything, and anyone of any age could come up with a great list poem.

The next kind of list poem I like to write is by gathering information, like objects, characteristics or specific memories. I think specificity makes this kind of poem easier to interpret, but that's just me.

I wrote a poem about things that reminded me of my mother. Some were tangible objects, some were specific memories of things she would do, little quirks and habits. I tried to put pieces of her life together not unlike a mosaic of words.

Yes, a mosaic. That's why I like this type of poem. 

THINGS THAT REMIND ME OF MY MOTHER 

(Okay, so the title is a bit obvious, but simplicity is key here.) 

Levi jeans with ankles tapered, 

Mary Jane and vanilla perfume,

Tacky signs with cutesy sayings,

Forgetting the light when leaving a room.

Braided rugs and potpourri, 

Frogs and Mickey Mouse,

Camouflage and fridge magnets,

Too much furniture in the house.

Michigan State and soap operas,

Leather jackets, Doritos,

Tan legs, wine coolers and lace curtains,

And berry-colored toes.

Big pink and white Christmas trees,

and Pepsi in a can,

Harley Davidson motorcycles,

and her Harley Davidson man.

Wings' McCarty and dog fur,

Smeared mascara on her face,

Sports bras and short overalls,

Virginia, that sandy-beach place.

Marlboro Red 100's in a box,

Afghans on the couch,

Roses in the backyard,

Curling hair and saying, "ouch!"

Bud bikinis, brown flip flops,

Cowboy hats to give her shade,

Shot glasses and beer mirrors,

Drinking Jack when bills weren't paid.

Fear of needles, fear of heights,

One snaggled tooth on top,

Long nights of waiting tables,

Morning hair much like a mop.

Clark bars and beef jerky,

Budweiser in longneck,

My mother, my best friend, my confidant,

My lovely, chaotic wreck.

For anyone who may be concerned about her reaction to this poem, she thought it was spot on. I call's 'em as I see's 'em and I get that from my Mama.

So what have we learned today, boys and girls? LISTS ARE GOOD. LISTS ARE YOUR FRIENDS. YOU WANT TO MAKE LISTS. YOU WANT TO MAKE LISTS OF LISTS. 

Okay, OCD. Chill out, now. It's only November.

Perhaps by December I'll have enough lists made that I can begin to start knocking things off the lists.

Maybe you can look around this holiday season that continues to do the "Christmas Creep" and consider the beauty in it all. Try to look past the retail veneer and past the commercialism that has taken over, and maybe during this time you can make a list of your blessings. Write a poem about it. 

xoxo :)

Flower Power

You're still here? Thanks so much! I appreciate every reader, every click, every mosey-on-over that leads you to my page. I really, really do.

So, this whole time, I've been raving about the power of poetry and the ability to say so much with so little. Well, everything I've said about keeping it simple, stupid, you should throw out the window right now.

Well, go on. Throw it out. You can go pick it up later, but for now, we're going to talk about how less is more, but more is also more. Sometimes, more is so much more than just plain old some. Are you still with me? "Less is more" always worked for Coco Chanel, but honey, I'm a poet in ripped jeans and horizontal stripes, okay? I'm not here to make a fashion statement. I'm here to make a statement in as many words as I damn well please.

I'm a lover of words. Short ones, long ones, silly ones, technical ones, cuss ones, flowery ones... oh, how I love how flowery figurative speech can be. It is both my greatest strength and most damning downfall as a writer. I can be professional when I want to be, but for the most part, the more flower, the more power I can punch into what I'm trying to say.

For example, here is a perfectly good poem:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue.

Sugar is sweet, 

and so are you.

It is simple, and memorable in its simplicity, I suppose. It's the original love poem we are first taught back in Kindergarten. Simple - it gets the point across. "I like you." It's the equivalent of those store-bought Valentines we all gave out to our classmates without prejudice in elementary school. Unless you were one of those cruel kids who only gave Valentines out to your friends, in which case, you Sir, are a jerk.

It doesn't convey emotion, though. That's the sad part about this happy little ditty - it doesn't make me feel special enough to give a crap about this poem.

Let's make it pretty. Add some glitter and some jazz and some sprinkles, add imagery and coloring. There's red, there's blue, there's the black and white of the thinking happening here. But there's no sparkle, no pizzazz. I almost wrote "pizzas," but that wouldn't make any sense. So let's use it!

Roses are red, in a way that pizza is red,

red sauce, smothering the dough.

Mottled with veggies, none of them blue.

Blue like the violets,

Or the way I feel without you.

We can keep going, but this doesn't make much sense. However, poetry isn't necessarily supposed to make sense. Sometimes it's just for fun, and those of you who have read Lewis Carroll or Dr. Seuss can understand that. So much nonsense and what for? Pure entertainment. Poetry is not a job; that's why we don't have professional poets. If poetry were a profession, it would be ruined. 

But look at my revised version of your go-to Valentine verse. It's nothing like anything you've read in a Hallmark card. You've never heard anything like it and seeing as we went from roses to pizza to being desolate without our lover, you're probably not apt to read anything similar anytime soon. Think about this, though: when reading the original, did your face move at all? Did you raise an eyebrow, turn up the corners of your lip in a smile, blow extra air out your nose in that distracted half-assed appreciation of mirth we all display unknowingly while scrolling through I Can Haz Cheezburger photos? You know the one I'm talking about - where your brain says, "This is funny, and I'm laughing!" but your nose just says, "pff," and moves on to the next meme. (Someone pointed that out to me once, and it's one of those things that CANNOT BE UNSEEN.) Chances are, you did not. You did not have a reaction to the former poem because it doesn't say anything you haven't heard before, and even if it does spew recycled sentiment at you, it doesn't say it in a way that makes us think about it differently. What does that piece offer to make it stand out from any other greeting card copy?

Now look back at the latter poem. It has been extended into more ideas. It has elaborated on just what kind of red those roses are. It has gone into detail what the redness looked like, and what the speaker feels about the color blue, and about the subject. We've added a simile! A smile with an extra i!

Quick sidebar: I love similes and metaphors. This is what I just decided about similes, and I'd like to share it with you. 

Simile = a smile with an extra "i." The extra "i" (eye) represents the new perspective the simile introduces. 

"The girls giggled loudly." That's nice.

"The girls giggled loudly, like a troop of Brownies."

I used a s i m i l e and it made me s m i l e, because of the new i (eye) I read it with. Now, the girls didn't just giggle loudly, they giggled in a way I can imagine because I can see, in my mind, a troop of Brownies giggling and I can imagine how loud that could be.

If you're writing poetry just for the sake of getting it on paper, then you're not writing it with a purpose. You're writing a pretty journal, and that's okay. It's for you. If you're writing for someone else, if you're writing to really convey a message, or if you have a specific target audience, such as the apple of your eye, then you might want to put more of yourself into your writing than the bare bones basic.

I'm not a John Mayer fan, but his song about saying what you need to say, well, it's spot-on. If your word is as powerful inside as you think it is, then you have the ability to pull it out and make a statement on paper. Don't keep it inside. If it needs to come out, do it justice and say it in the best way possible. If you've got a lot of love to give, let it all out and watch as it all comes back tenfold. That's how love works - and that's exactly how I feel about good poetry. Put your best words into the Universe and bask in the beautiful words that come back around.

I'm not going to tell you to have a nice evening. Go have a wonderful evening filled with laughter, love, and learned lessons. 

See? You might hear your checkout girl tell you to have a nice day, and forget she said so before you walk out the door, but if she were to tell you to have a wonderful day of soaking in the beauty of the world, you're going to remember that she said that to you, aren't you?

Seriously, go have a wonderful evening. Thanks for reading.

xoxo :)

Silver Anniversary of Your Saturday Evening Poet

Tonight is a night for celebrations, a night to party in honor of the silver anniversary of this life’s beginning in my current self! Or, in less flowery terms, Sunday is my birthday and tonight, I’m going out on the town to soak up the words and sounds and vibes of the drag scene of Detroit, MI. I don’t know what it is about those special occasions that makes me think the drag queen scene is an appropriate way to celebrate, but my fair ginger lover and I are attending Rocky Horror Picture Show tonight for my birthday and I am quite excited!

So in honor of my birthday, or “hitting the QC” as I put it recently, since I will be 25, I am going to share with you a comparison of the writer I began as, and the writer I have evolved into. A “This is Your Life!” in writing. Please enjoy!

Around age 13, I got into songwriting. Big time. Was the lead singer of many fledgling bands, most (okay, all) of which did not survive past the basement door. Around age 13, I got into a LOT of things, actually. But the one that has had the most positive impact on my life (other than my fair ginger lover of course) is writing as a catharsis. I had kept journals since the age of 8, when I was presented with a tiny, lockable diary from my Grama Barb. I wish I still had that diary. I wrote in it faithfully every single day, even if just to update it on what we had for dinner. It was my friend in a time when I didn’t have many of those, and certainly none I could talk to outside of school. When I moved to live with my mother, I had real friends and the journals didn’t stop, but they weren’t much more than glorified bookends while I explored my newfound freedom.

But 13 was a big year for me – the only year I got to be a teenager. After I discovered pot, but before I figured out how to make babies. That glorious year of discovery, excitement, drama, and the invincibility. Oh, how I miss the invincibility.

I felt like a rebel then, and now, I can see why. I can see why because I still feel the same, pushing on the sides of the box I’m in, daring it to move so that I may experience something different. Looking for novelty. Feeling oppressed. Some people are just adolescent at heart, and I fear I may be one of them. Some call them hipsters, but those are different. Those people are just weird, with their skinny jeans. You wouldn’t catch me dead in a pair of skinny jeans.

If you did, it’s because of the jeans.

Looking back at this piece now, I wish I could show this to a therapist. I think I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I had just said these things out loud rather than write them down in my passive-aggressive way and wish on stars at night that someone would save me from myself.

Please enjoy, and if you must laugh, well, okay. I did, too.

INSIGNIFICANT REBELLION

I’ve got the world in an uproar

I’m runnin’ through my house,

Slammin’ all the doors

I’m smashin’ all the windows

And pulling all the stuffing outta my pillows

I’m pulling all the carpeting offa my floor

‘Cause I’m sick of this routine

I don’t wanna do this no more.

If I wanna destroy my socks

It’s okay

You were always the first to tell me

They were ugly anyway

Let me play with my food

Throw it against the wall

It’s quite all right if I chew the phone line

Not like anybody’s gonna call

Chorus

Can’t I come home to a different place

I’m sick of this body, sick of my face

I’m tired of being forever a shame

God, just give me a new face and name

This is wearing me thin

I’m losing my grip, losing my grip

Don’t take it personal if I hate you today

It’s just that I keep working without good pay

This job sucks, being in this cage

I’d go run away, but dammit, I’m underage

All I have now is my future to look for

For now I’m content,

Slammin’ the door

Chorus X2

And I had something written on the page like, “…and fade…” because of course I was going to hit the stage someday, even if it were just at my local coffee shop, and I was going to be discovered singing this amazing song and I was gonna be the next Avril Lavigne, yessirree Bob!

I wish I could go back to being that girl, just for a little while. Just to remember what it felt like when I knew exactly what I wanted from my life. I wanted everything, and back then, there were no doubts in my mind that I could have them.

I made different choices and learned my lessons the hardest way I could figure out how. I don’t know why, maybe just to spite people. I had felt so suffocated for so long, I felt like I needed to take a breath, tell everyone how I felt, take another breath, and keep going, and I couldn’t let up from that because I couldn’t give anyone the opportunity to shush me again. I was tired of being shushed, both literally and figuratively. 

Fourteen, hormones raging, I had my first boyfriend who was willing to call me his girlfriend in public, who had a CAR (omg he was like so mature!) and was madly in love with my best friend who was madly in love with my OTHER best friend! Drama much, right?

So I decided to make myself the center of attention for pretty much EVER as far as my high school career went, and instead of doing it the right way, by being super smart and cool and having a talent like writing or singing or drama club (all of which I was good at) I got myself knocked up and did the proper penance and kept the baby. Who I love dearly to this day and she brings me joy with every awkward gangly thud she makes as she launches her beanpole nine-year-old self around our tiny house. I martyred myself for the cause that had been drilled into me for years by my father: take responsibility for your actions. Even if you screw up, stand by your work.

This is what I wrote the day I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, at 14.

TWO PINK LINES

My heart fell to the bottom of my chest as my guts flew into my throat. Everything stopped for a moment – my heartbeat, my brain activity. My pulse. I knew it, I just knew it. I was going to die.

Twin pink lines stared back at me, taunting me, screaming in my face, “I told you so!” I was so wrong. It could happen to me, it did happen to me, it was happening to me. I was…gulp…pregnant.

Somehow, my voice returned to me and a ragged scream escaped from a place inside me I never knew existed. It was a low, guttural cry of, “noo…noo…noo-oo-oo!”

After the world stopped spinning, I stood up and looked in the mirror. A stranger stared back at me. Who was this person, this pretty face with a bright future? Who was wearing those sparkling blue eyes? That girl only three minutes ago had been me. Blinking furiously, I began to see myself in a new light. My life began to crumble before my eyes.

Minutes later, I stood at the bus stop, looking like I’d just seen a ghost. I watched blankly as my hands shook like leaves in the early May breeze. Thoughts at a thousand miles per hour raced through my mind. 

One trumped them all, though, stomping on me like a steel-toed boot. “I’m scared.”

...

Then there was sweet sixteen, that wonderful year of first kisses and epic fallouts. It was a dark time in my writing, full of adult things that I shouldn’t have known about yet, didn’t understand but thought I had mastered in my short time as a writer. Because what I was writing, I felt so strongly. As I’m sure every emo girl with wispy hair and a bruised heart would say.

ALL THE LITTLE PIECES

I leaned down and picked them up. The sharp edges of each tiny piece slit the skin of my fingertips, but I never felt the pain. Blood poured from my chest where the hole where my heart used to be was open and exposed for the whole world to see my anguish. My freshly-curled hair fell in front of my face, and the tips were quickly saturated with the pooling mess on the floor. I gathered the pieces in my shredded hands and gently put them back where they belonged. I put my skin of fakeness, of bravery, back on and looked at you for the very last time before I turned and walked away. Little did I realize the shards of my heart would quickly tear away that shell. Before I took two steps, I turned to look at you again, but you were too busy ripping out your own heart to see.

...

Funny story – Eight years later, I married him.

Seventeen brought me a new romance, a new chapter in my life that, if any of my chapters could be ripped out and rewritten, it would be this one.

I wrote this just before I graduated high school, thinking I was really going to get out and do something with myself. This poem made my Creative Writing teacher cry, and for the first time in her teaching career, she awarded someone with an A+++++. She told me so, and I’m proud of it.

TAKE A BREATH

A strong-knitted sweater

With faded blue jeans

Blue eyes staring towards the sky

Grass so green grows beneath small feet

Feeling soft blades between toes

Long tousled hair blows golden

So small, a mind so deep

Where did Time go?

Friends slip so easily

Like water between fingers

Sliding into ice off the snowy roof of home

Concealing rooms to hide in,

To hide from.

Windows with autographs of Jack Frost

Translucent pictures that wonder,

Where did Time go?

Summer’s gone, coppery autumn, too

The season’s bold colors run like rain

Under dirty bespeckled city snow

Memories fade, construction paper in the sun

Those scribbles look so familiar –

Like they’re from back then,

But they’re not.

The wax is freshly sticking to the paper

A tiny pink hand with plump pillows of fat

Grasp crayons of many colors

A rainbow in a box of 96.

Art like Da Vinci,

In first grade form.

So young, so pure.

Where did Time go?

The telephone won’t ring

Hanging silent on the wall

The mailbox stands empty –

No one cares.

Doors, with deadbolts of many metals

Remain locked so tight

Papers so high in piles so great

“I’ll show you, prove you wrong.”

The fridge, almost empty

The heart, nearly broken.

Confidence, like opportunity,

Runs out the faucets.

Where did Time go?

No act of God

Nor element of Nature –

Nor man

Can change this rock-hard demeanor

Baby kisses have the power

To turn a scared teenager into a warrior.

Work – like payments in rear

Make that teenager an avenger.

A superhero, a real-live adult.

Empty mail and silent phones bring peace

Who needs to look out windows?

There’s too much time to make up for early

Too late just comes too soon.

Where did Time go?

Self-critical, overbearing, never ending

Little girl with too-big dreams

She’s not going to find

Under construction paper pictures

The intimidating piles of “to-do”

And everybody else’s “no you can’ts”

Where did Time go?

A sweater and blue jeans

Blue eyes staring towards the sky

All is right because I know

Time is in my hands.

Re-reading it now, as I write it for you, I think that this poem has a lot of different directions it is coming from, and a lot of places it’s trying to go, but I think that’s why I left it as it was. It represented a time when I had so many ambitions and so many opportunities, but I needed to figure out how to handle them all because if I didn’t, I was going to end up…

Well, let’s not talk about where I was going to end up. Because I’m doing just fine now. Life works in mysterious ways.

Eighteen brought me to Central Michigan University and the most fun I’ve had as a writer so far. Working with Robert Fanning was such a fantastic opportunity and I am privileged to call him my friend. (Well, we’re FB friends and I adore everything he produces in print.)

Some of the best stuff I’ve written so far was written for his class. It was such an interesting course to take because I had no idea how complex the world of poetry really was. My feeble attempts at rhyming some words in some kind of rhythm on a page were terribly overshadowed by the awesome things I read and heard in that room over the course of that semester. I learned about new techniques, different formats and styles. I learned about playing with the spacing and placement. It gives the poem so much more dimension when you add a few extra spaces and tabs! I love working with word placement on the page because the best poems are those that you can see in your mind. Adding movement to that picture adds a dimension that only improves the full effect. I particularly enjoy this poem because I feel like it dances on the page, a quick shimmy.

THE LIBERATION OF EDITING

Once upon a moment

                My mood was painted blue

                                You held the paintbrush to my soul

As I

                Wrapped in a box with

                                Four neat corners

Six sides so perpendicular

                And particular

                                Makes me feel peculiar

To write about and feel so great

                To liberate

                                My soul, so moldable

A sculpture, unfinished

                In your hands

As you hold in front of me

                The key, piece de resistance

                                Grand finale – complete!

The final streak across my

                Dirty canvas life

                                Make it light!

After that, I went through some dark stuff. Darker than the emo girl in me could ever dream of going. It was a bad place and there was very little written during that time that wasn’t a plea for help or a rough draft of a suicide note. But during this time, I read some pieces that really helped me to get through, helped me to see that I wasn’t the oddball, wasn’t the only person in the whole entire Universe who felt like this or was strange in these ways. I lost touch with writing because I was in a place where the writing wasn’t good anymore. It was just quick scrawls of “please” and “I’m sorry” and “help me.”

When I put my life back together, I started writing again. First with the journals. When I felt comfortable talking to paper again, I started getting a little deeper and pulling out the words that really hurt. The ones that were festering deep inside and screaming to be let out. When I did, with the help of my very best friend and the keeper of my heart, my fair ginger lover, this is what I came up with.

FORGIVEN

As were are two of the same,

I am divided, myself.

Two time zones:

Before you,

and After.

The chasing of
Destiny,

the sweetest of

victories.

Everything that ever was,

I don’t have to

succumb

to being part of it.

I don’t have to

continue

to live in vain.

I don’t have to

dream

As if I will die

Alone.

Seeing your face

For the first time,

That moment

Was upon the wing

of a prayer.

If there is a God,

If one can truly be

Vindicated,

I was.

I’m twenty five and I have three children, a second husband, a luggage rack full of emotional baggage and debt, no college degree, and no career other than the tables I turn at “Senior Suburbia Diner” for lack of the desire to get any flack for mentioning my company’s name. I have not written a book. I have not graduated college – yet. I have no publications to my name and growing stack of rejection letters.

But as my mother once told me, I have a 100% track record for getting through bad days, and it is against all possible odds that I will never, ever see my name in print. So I go out tonight, and I will celebrate my silver anniversary of life, and I will wake up tomorrow and write something new. Everyone is a story in the end – make sure yours is a good one.

 xoxo :)