Believe it or not (though I suppose you wouldn’t have a basis either way), I dappled in poetry back in the day. Junior year of college, I enrolled in an Introduction to Poetry course–essentially workshop-based but far less intense than this graduate school workshop. The professor was…eccentric–to say the least. He stood at the front of the windowless classroom every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon that semester, wearing layers upon layers of ridiculous attire. A leather vest over a vibrant dress shirt (which I always seem to remember being yellow–mustard yellow–though I imagine there were other colors), maybe even a short-sleeved button-up over the dress shirt, always in extraordinarily baggy jeans draped with chains, and tremendous combat boots–black and loosely tied. A beanie atop his bald head. He rambled in the most nonsensical but fascinating manner as he agonized over the meaning of a student’s poem. Conjuring up fantastical scenarios and surreal images to shed metaphorical light on what tended to be a fairly straightforward poem as the student would later confess. But we would watch–a lesson in psychotic creativity–as he curled into himself on the cold tile floor beneath the desk at the front of the classroom. As he stood upon the chair accompanying said desk, towering over his wide-eyed students. As he slumped into the front left corner of the room and pulled his knees to his chest, speaking with such fervor that one could not help but be captivated and maybe a little bit frightened. But his genuine interest in what we had to say was nothing less than flattering.
I’ll admit I’m not much of a poet. Brevity is not my strong suit. I half-assed a lot of the poems because it didn’t seem to matter that much. They were simply exercises in creative thinking. And everyone would get an A as long as they wrote something every week. I countered these poor excuses for poetry with some attentive and thoughtful efforts. And until tonight, I had forgotten all about them. And as it turns out, some of these are rather inspiring in the way that sometimes I read something I wrote months or years ago that seemed unimportant at that time but opens up opportunities for me in the present. Opportunities to explore connections between my past and my right now and maybe create something worth reading. (Though I suppose that worth would be decided upon by the readers themselves.) Anyway, my brilliantly bizarre poetry experience back then might end up saving me now as I try to put pieces together in my writing and in my life.
I’ll leave with a little bit of this uncovered (amateur) poetry.
Anxiety
Frenetic thoughts collide
and ricochet in my mind.
Foot taps
to the rapid rhythm of my heart.
Handwringing.
Jaw clenching.
Knots in my stomach.
Wool in my veins.
Sit back and exhale
a futile breath.
Silent
The most important words
are the ones I will never speak.
The consonants and vowels
will get caught in my throat,
stuck in my teeth,
evaporate into a sigh.
But never will they tumble
off of my tongue,
slip through my lips,
be audible to a single soul.
I compensate
with a pen in hand.
Untangle 