Sweet Yet Sour

Number 4 – Where have the words gone?

Thursday, September 4th, 2008 | Weird Things | 1 Comment

I began this list as “10 Weird/Interesting Things About Dorrie”. So far, it’s been mostly weird things, generally involving insects (which is strange in itself).

I thought I would try writing about something that’s more interesting than it is weird.

Once, a long time ago, I loved words.  I loved the way certain words sounded and I loved stringing them together to make something beautiful.  Once I was a poet.

I “published” my first poem when I was in 8th grade.  I say “published” because it was a kids magazine that was printed and circulated only in my home town.  Nonetheless, I was very proud of it; it was a poem about imagination and it was called “Women and Children First”.

During that time I wrote a lot of poetry; to the point of always having a separate notebook with me just for my writings.  Where I went to high school each year a collection of student poetry, stories and art would be published – “Echoes”.  For all three years of high school I had at least one poem, if not several, in Echoes.

I really thought I was going to be a poet, and I read a lot of poetry then as well.  For my high school graduation present to myself, I bought the Complete Poems of E.E. Cummings, my favorite poet, and read almost every page.

Where I went to college for the first three years, Lawrence University, there was a similar collection of student work called “Tropos”.  As in high school I was able to have at least one poem in Tropos for each of those three years.

And then for some reason, the poems stopped.  Honestly, I have no idea why or when, but I stopped thinking about words, stopped writing poems in my head and stopped keeping a poetry notebook.

When I think about why I don’t write poetry anymore it’s a strange feeling that comes over me.  It’s hard to describe, but it feels like an envelope closing inside my chest; as if once there was a place where the words came from inside me, and now it’s closed.

When I look back at the poems I wrote and published, I think some of them are the typical crap written by an angst-ridden teenager.  I suppose that a lot of people go through a poetry writing phase in their teen years; it’s an art that is sometimes driven by depression, and well, teenagers are a hormonal, depressed bunch.

But there are a few of my old poems that I still find beautiful.  Here’s one of them:

Topic

to tickle the lollipop of the sunset
to cling to ambrosia twine
between the stars
to find sanctuary in Beloved Moon
where time is arabesque in its lines
to be so long amaranthine
where why is no longer a question
where smooth is more than touch
but a place to think
to put beauty upon the shelf
and begin again with ethereal
where words are the pin cushion
of some vast seamstress
whose cloth is woven
of me’s and you’s
and mixed with the colors of a bubble
on the brink of popping
to say to the children
gathered at one’s feet
these are the flowers
that grow on the tips of fairy noses

such
is life
for the poet laureate
upon a rose petal