One of the best and worst parts about moving is finding stuff you've forgotten about and the stuff you hold on to, even though you never look at or use it anymore. Some years ago I carefully transcribed the poems I wrote in high school and college into a spiral journal and in the years since, I've added scraps and fragments written here and there. Some of the poems are good, most are just plain angsty, all are a record of my then-life. Here are a few I wrote in high school.
Mislead
I feel strong
Yet there's no muscle to show
I feel intelligent
Yet grades don't reflect it
I feel love
Yet spend weekends alone,
never invited.
I feel power
Yet I'm never a leader,
always a follower.
I feel truth
Yet I am told lies,
still believe lies.
I feel beauty
then look in the mirror.
I feel rich
Yet I can't attain my desires.
I feel honored
Yet never rewarded
I feel pain
Yet no one cares.
-1997 (What strikes me about this one is how it was written out of pain and hyperbole and therefore filled with inaccuracies about my high school experience. Bless my 17 year old heart.)
Hope
The cold air creeps across the surface,
Reminders that winter still reigns
Amidst yearnings for spring and summer.
Snow blocks all excapes-
No place to run and no place to hide.
There's no alternative but to
Face the mistery in the bleek, barren day,
And then wonder if Spring might come again
Or if winter is just a life sentence.
There's love and hate
But nothing in between,
Except for sunlight struggling
To shine through before it's strangled again.
A leaf hangs from the branch
Its owner is old, the roots are firm
As is its icy hold.
Restraining, pushing fingers
Not allowing an escape or a survival.
But the leaf knows
It knows that spring might come again
And then it will begin to live.
So it waits, ignores the cold,
Forgets the pain, and remembers that
Spring could come
One day soon.
-1998 (written in my senior year Advanced English Seminar class with Dr. Langlas)
Paul
I met him once
Enough to read his eyes
I know him well
But really not at all
The idea engraved on my heart,
My mind and my soul
One brief moment
Trapped in time forever
And how can I forget
Him I never knew.
-1997 (Note: it turns out you can forget "him I never knew." No clue who Paul is.)
