See how menacing “’tis the season” sounds when you write it grammatically correct? Anyway, I was on the fence about writing something Christmas-y this month, but as is often the case, I finally got an idea! It’s “Christmastime”–a simple poem, but I hope it’ll contribute to your enjoyment of this wonderful time of year, if only more than Justin Bieber’s “Mistletoe” or a rerun of Jingle All the Way. Additionally, I’ve attached a free-verser from a year or so ago that I wrote in Intro to Creative Writing; this one’s called “Winter Day”, and while I’m not outstandingly proud of it, I think it’s worth sharing now. Have a happy and/or merry Christmas and/or other snow-related ethno-religious celebratory period!
Fyrewrit
So like I said, there’s a plethora of creative writing-related opportunities around Seattle, but the principal ones so far for me have been right on campus. For one, there’s the quarterly sci-fi/fantasy journal AU (to which I will be submitting a brand-new, thematically-relevant story within a week), as well as the more general Bricolage, but there’s also two groups: The unfortunately-abbreviated English honor society Sigma Tau Delta–a formal, albeit currently quite small closed club–and the casual gang of literary geeks that is “Write Away!” So far, the latter has been great; I’ve only been to one complete meeting so far (and due to a scheduling conflict, I’ll be missing yet another next week), but the camaraderie is splendid and the trio of prompts we’re set to work off of each time produce some remarkable stuff. There’s no criticism involved, but that’s okay–there’ll be no shortage of that in my actual English classes!
Anyway, the point: At yesternight’s meeting, the middle prompt was intended to be based on whatever “inspiration” we happened to have, though the time was prefaced with a pair of videos of performance poet Sarah Kay (if you like yourself some deep free-verse in front of a mike, check her out on YouTube by all means). Afterwards, I learned that some people continued their prompt from the first exercise, and some people either zeroed in on a very specific part I didn’t catch right away or just did their own thing, but I tried to work based on a synthesis of the two poems she performed. One was about the California wildfires, another was about desperately-written postcards. I thought about it, and… I came up with the attached poem.
Note: I did give it some editing afterwards, and since I also felt a little uncomfortable about it being composed in my pet rhyming structure, about my pet subject matter (even though it was largely stream-of-consciousness at first, and we had 20 minutes), I… embellished it a bit.
It’s No Use…
Go Knock on the door of a locked house
And denial is all you will find
There’s a chain on the latch, and it’s rusty
Though the age, you yet cannot divine
Now Perhaps there’s a window that’s opened
And through which you may clamber within
But the blinds are all drawn and the shades shut
Though you swear you can hear a faint din
And Maybe there’s a key that is hidden
In a rock made of plaster and paint
But the garden is overgrown greatly
With flowers of sinners and saints
Save The times that you’ve spent in your searching—
Leave them promptly, as well as the stair
For you’ll pry and you’ll beat and you’ll plead, “please”
All in vain, when there’s not a soul cares
Love The tiles, the roof, and the mortar
But admire them all far, alone
Oh, there’s nothing more cruel to a heart than
To just knock at a dead-lockéd home.
Warning
Her hair cascades in waves that shine like fine obsidian
Her eyes, the green and cooling sheen of winter wearing thin
Her figure, well-defined; her mind, it seems does little much
I can control, for on her soul, a sign reads, “Look, Don’t Touch”
Her skin so pale, as if it hails from polished alabaster
Her voice, resolved, it leaves absolved the pains I cannot master
Her spirit, dark, perhaps a lark, or maybe just a crutch
For inner woes—Why? No-one knows. The sign reads, “Look, Don’t Touch”
Her artistry, soon history, still leaves my passions racing
In photographs, she rarely laughs, yet by them, I go pacing
The warning’s there, it’s hardly fair, and I have thought, as such
That rules be damned, I’ll take her hand, and Look inside her Touch.
A Poem = Published
My submitted poem, “The Dreamers Said”, won a spot in the Creative Communication compendium “A Celebration of Poets”!
Notes&Sketches 