Writing Journal (Day Six)

I was having some trouble with inspiration for today's. I tried figuring out which sense of mine was at it's peak, but couldn't come up with one. Did I want to write about what I saw? What I heard? What I felt (physically, as in with my fingers)? I was just having the hardest time finding something to notice!

After my break (where I had tried to work on the poem), I was talking with my crew-mates. Tab and I ended up talking about rap. Got me thinking back to the rap stage in my writing during high school. Very brief. But I asked around: what is something that a rapper wouldn't rap about? Because that's precisely what I wanted to "rap" about.

The answer I came up with: Trivial Pursuit.

I was going to come home after FHE, go down to the library and bust out my Genus Edition of the game and go to town. But when I got home, I got distracted by Maggie and Jay's Headlines and then the two movies that we watched before I went to bed....
So I struggled with this one, again about my younger years.

One of my goals for Wednesday (since I've effectually grounded myself until Institute) is to go through the poems I've forced out and see if I can't find something to work with here.


Echoes of the Past
Echoes of the past come back
To haunt me in my dreams.
Through the three-tiered windows,
I am taken back to a younger self,
Legs dangling out the middle
As I devise ways to sneak
In and back out when I was older.

I tried to be rebellious,
But I saw how that turned out:
No one home to know if I'd been a fool.
Even at my worst,
I never was that bad.

A lump on a log,
A knot in your throat;
You never did tell me
What it was all about.

Writing Journal (Day Five)

Again another below-par poem for today. But, hey, the challenge issued was for one poem a day, not one good poem a day. Crappy title included.

Inspired by my wondering about my teenaged spiritual life (and lack thereof). I'm not even going to consider it good enough to be cliche.

What if...
What if I had done more-
What if I had finished?
Would someone there have seen the light?
Could someone else have chosen right?

The people in the dark are falling,
Calling for someone to save them.
How I wish I could.
But if I cannot be their savior,
I pray for someone to be sent in my stead.

Writing Journal (Day Four)

I didn't make much time for writing on Saturday. Between working, watching curling, and shoveling, I just didn't have much time. I was lucky to snatch these lines while in the car:

Dirty snow covers the signs.
Light on a flag captures my eyes.
Slivers of a silvery moon hide in the skies.

Can I make it a haiku?

Winter Ride
Gray snow covers signs
Lighted flags capture my eyes
Silvers slice the skies

Writing Journal (Day Three)

I'm not promising anything good with these poem-a-day's. I'm going to extend the challenge to give the poems titles, which is something I've always struggled with. Echoing my previous statement, I'm not promising anything good with these titles.

I've always liked the sounds of curling, especially in a traditional rink setting. So while I was on my break, I tried to tune out the jazz and focus on the memory of the sounds.

Good Game
Echoes of the evening shouts
Sink into the clean white sheets.
The scratches and the gliding
Are hardly heard
Beneath the hurries and the hards.
The stones across the pebbled ice
Are soothing to the soul.
Cheers arise as the
Click of a take-out fills the air.

Writing Journal (Day Two)

Not that yesterday's was any good, but today's will likely be worse, since I don't have all day to tinker with inspiration.

I started off this morning with a self-indulgent bit before work, fully intending to finish it while on break. But when I got to break, I found a voicemail from my mom and a text from my sister saying that Sgt. Daniel Thompson, a guy I graduated high school with, was killed in Afghanistan on Tuesday. (See story here.)


Naturally, I scrapped the first one and started one with the intent to memorialize him. Except it sounded like a hundred other poems that had been written. I scrapped that one, too, and wound up with this one.
_____________________________
Prayer for Daniel

The cuts on my hand
Seem like nothing compared to
The life your friends lost.
The extra bread he gave
Does not console me,
For I need little consoling.

I have but one simple memory of you:
In our eleventh year of school,
You showed me a poem
Written for your girlfriend.
The toothy grin you gave me
When I told you it was good
Will soon be buried under stars, stripes, and sand.

May you find peace on the other side,
For you did not find it here.
May those you loved behind
Carry your voice and smile in their hearts.
You will meet them in the hustle and the bustle
Of the Resurrection morn.
I pray that that is not the last you'll see of them.