Poetic Vibe

Cutter's Log - Stardate 3102.31.80
Current Song - Across The Universe (The Beatles)

I'm about to begin my 11th high school sports season as someone who writes a lot of words and paragraphs. I have never considered myself a creative writer, despite taking a college class of that name at Sauk.

Creating writing (English 270) was a prerequisite for my Mass Communication degree at SVCC. I took it in the spring of 2008. The number 270 represented the highest-level English course offered by the college. All I had to offer to everyone were the many, many words and sentences that I had put forth as a high school sports journalist. I knew all about Associated Press style, but nothing about poetic and short story style.

Somewhere in my attic is a folder of my class portfolio, containing what I chose as my five best works in the class. These were re-tooled versions of original drafts. I really sucked in that class, as my portfolio grade boosted by percentage UP to a 67%. For whatever reason unknown to me, I was given a C- for the class. These works were nothing more than stuff that I just haphazardly thought of just to try to get the best grade possible.

Some short story about a boring guy named Esmera Kuumb shopping at a mall during Christmas comes to mind. Huh? Then there was some poem that had a stanza about Kewanee's indecision for a conference affiliation. Huh? There might have been another poem in there.

Either way, these are NOT any of my best works. If anything, I thought I was going to score the highest on the poetry assignments. After all, this was the only class material that I had at least SOME experience in.

Before I was able to enjoy putting words and paragraphs together, I enjoyed putting words in short sentences together. The rhyming scheme of a poem always fascinated me. It just so happened that one day I fell in love with a girl in middle school and certain complimentive words were just flowing in my mind.

I remember the scene: I was bored while watching one of Sterling High School's junior varsity football games at Roscoe Eades Stadium. Instead of the football game, this girl kept bouncing around in my mind. It got to the point where I needed to be alone for a little while. I went underneath the bleachers and found a large padded thing to lie on. Staring up at the bleachers, these complimentive words (pretty, beautiful, lovely, wonderful) flew all over. Rather than just flinging these words randomly in showing my love for her, I thought the most perfect way for an 8th grader (2001) to show it was through poetry (as flowers the year before apparently didn't work).

Through the night I carefully constructed the sentences together, and when I got home that night I quickly wrote down what I remembered. Reading it, editing it, and posting it online for all of my friends to see turned out to be a pretty good idea. After all, I didn't know anyone else in my class that wrote ANY poem whatsoever. This poem went without a name for maybe a year before I thought that it was a good idea to name it; in case a book was in the works.

Between the ages of 18-22, I found myself writing more and more poems. Around this time, I was trying to discover what it was like to be in love with a girl and things like that. It was at this time when I bought a blank journal book from Borders to put these poems in.

These poems had a lot to do with my personal struggles with finding true love and engaging in friendships. When my mind couldn't relieve itself of the girl I liked, I would pull out the Poem Book and start writing.

I stopped writing for a while until about a year ago. I had met this amazing woman that I couldn't get my mind off of. She was one of those in which I knew I had ZERO chance at. Pulling an anvil out of a hat wasn't going to make all of this happen. In addition, there were some vast differences between her and I. I think the frustration of all of this led me to penning a poem about her and the fact that I just could not win her love.

Since I moved into my own home, I have had plenty of time to think about the difficulties that bothered me with love. All of the missed opportunities. All of the girls I overlooked. All of the mistakes that I made. I had stopped writing in the book for five years. Since the fall of 2012, I have written four.

My losing steak is still active. The anger of that and the hardships that I had to endure in several situations just made me write some more. I wrote two poems this month, and another one may be in the works soon.

Speaking of anger, this blue-colored Poem Book of mine has a title. It's called "My Anger." I came up with that title a few years ago. Come to think of it, I am still angry about the mistakes that I had made when trying to find true love. In addition to the anger that builds every waking moment when I cannot experience it.

I have about 1/3rd of the book completed. At last count there were 38 poems in the book, of which only 10 or so that I am proud of right now. The others were messed-up junk.

So much for creative writing class. Counting creative writing class, I have penned 40 poems. One of which is incomplete (and probably will never be finished). Two poems have the girl's name as the title. One is a bad rap song. One contains nothing more than an ellipse. Another is a mockery of a Gertrude Stein poem. Just many horrible, God-awful pieces of crap. As mentioned, I'm only proud of about 10 of them, including all five of those I've written since 2012.

I guess time and experience makes a poet's ability better.


(Link to a past entry called "Love Through The Written Word," which relates to this one.)