Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Kickin it Old School

I have a treat for you! Okay, either a treat or torture, depending on your viewpoint, but either way: yay stuff!

There was a hacking incident at my real website's host, and I had to change my FTP password. When I logged into the FTP to test it, I realized I hadn't looked at this shit in years. Guys! Guys! My old poetry is still on there! That's right, poetry from high school and college. Stuff that was published (in the school literary art magazines BUT STILL).

So what I want to do is share some of those, and tell the stories behind them! Woo! Are you super excited? ARE YOU? Because I can promise you that I was SUUUUUUUUper emo back then. I mean, I still am, but back then I was all HERE IS MY EMOTION ON PAPER FOR ALL TO SEEEEEE and then I would run and hide and act like I didn't have anything to do with it once someone was actually reading it. But man... I felt shit. DEEP.

BAM. Poem number one is a gem that I wrote my senior year of high school, which was published in the college lit-art mag my freshman year (1998, oh god I feel old).


Worlds Unspoken

If I said that I love You
the world would not stop spinning,
or collectively gasp.
It would calmly shake Its mighty head
without surprise and in slight disbelief
(springing, or rather not, from Its hearing
me utter those words to many a boy
many a time).

  words are so cheap.

But if I say naught,
and that old adage holds true,
then my actions are
screaming
raging
becoming hoarse
from telling You
(and only You)
   I love You
silently.

And if You said You love me
I would smile,
I might kiss those uttering lips,
but my world would not stop spinning
or collectively gasp.
It may even harbor a touch of disbelief
(only because It has heard
those words from many a boy
many a time).

  words are just noise.

But if they remain unspoken,
and that old saying holds true,
then I’d swear in Our silence
I am deafened by the
roaring
thundering
constantly in my ears
of You telling me
(and only me)
   You love me
silently.

OH MAN ARE YOU FEELING IT

YOU ARE SO MOVED RIGHT NOW I KNOW

So the story behind this one... he was my first long-term boyfriend. 7 whole months! We broke up briefly during the summer because he was going out with our friends and playing pool and smoking and sharing cigarettes with this really buxom blonde girl we knew, and I wasn't allowed to go out and do anything because hi, strict conservative religious parents. I'd tried to get him to quit smoking and he told me he had, but then he slipped up, and the sharing-with-Miss-Boobtastic was the final straw for me.

He was my first really serious boyfriend. We almost did the cliché prom thing of losing our virginity to each other, but once in the hotel room we both chickened out. I still sometimes wish we hadn't - he would have been a really good guy to be my first.

We got back together maybe a week or two after breaking up. I was sobbing pretty much constantly on the phone to my friend J, who was actually the one who introduced me to this boyfriend - they were in band together. Yep, I was in love with a band geek. Hopelessly so, at that. We split again at the end of the summer because we were going to separate colleges. We tried to stay in touch, and he did come out to visit once, but it was all different by then.

We never did say the L word to each other. But as a 17 year old, I felt it. SO MUCH. So I wrote this poem. I can't remember if I ever let him read it or not, but man, I got those feelings OUT.

3 comments:

  1. I found some stuff I wrote back in 2001 - 2003. When they invent time travel I want to go back and slap past ernest and tell him to grow a pair.

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    1. Just wait... I bet the more of these I post, the better you'll feel about yours. :)

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  2. Meanwhile, I was going the Mercedes Lackey/Anne McCaffrey route: by which I mean, telepathic magical animals you can ride and who prove that you're super-special. Also sonnets -- but those look less ridiculous now that I'm actually publishing a sonnet. :)

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