I never called myself a poet until the moment you let those words slip from your mouth. You picked up a very worn piece of paper that was scribbled all over. Written on, crossed out, written on again, written in the margins of, crossed out, Xed over, written on, scribbled on, short hand, short hard, is that even a word, WTF is that thing, ahhh some sort of clarity, huh? And yet somehow you read it, understood and fuck even liked it. Then said, “this is really good. You really are a poet.” A poet? since when did I become one of those Hell I’m only 8 years old. Yet the words I wrote down and the images I spilled onto the page was more then just a thought in my head. It was a clearly illustrated picture book drawn up by the mind of a young child. Only my pictures were my words and the illustrations were my ideas, my thoughts, and my desires. So I continued to write. And as I wrote I decided I may actually really be a poet because as I wrote I felt my veins surge with the red ink of my pens and my eyes dropped tears of blue ink onto the page and all my sweat, hard work, and desires were preserved in black ink the spread out across pages and pages of notebook paper. I got so good at this new game that in the 4th grade I was called into the principals office with my teacher sitting by with a piece of paper in her hand. This work must be plagiarized. No way could a child so young write like this. No way could a girl this young come up with ideas like that. The assignment you ask? Since it was around Halloween time write your own epitaph. So I did. Yet it was too vivid for my teacher. Too real for my teacher. Because even though I was a young girl I knew all about death. You see, my lizard died the day before. So I had something to go on. Something to work with. I guess you could say my first muse. So I just wrote what I knew and what I felt and got accused of plagiarism. So I put down my pen and tucked away the notebooks for a few years. Then the urges over took me and I began to write again, because you see when you are a poet you can’t silence the urge to write, to create, to express. So I gave in. I picked up my pen and I suddenly knew how King Arthur felt when he picked up Excalibur. And suddenly I felt whole again. As a hole in my soul was patched up as I wrote down the words that had been bottled up for far to long. And a relief swept over me was almost the same as a genie being released from his prison cell of a bottle after thousands of years And I started out writing about death again. Because what made me write was the suicide of my boyfriend. Right before my own eyes. So I vividly described how I felt that night when he pulled that gun into sight. And since the therapist they dragged me to told me writing was therapeutic when I refused to talk to her I decided it was time to write again. To chronicle what I had seen hoping to erase the images from my mind but putting them on the page only made them real again so I had to write more to squash the rest of the demons inside. And you know that lady was right. Writing in therapeutic so I will continue to write. And have continued to write. And poet’s work is never done and their poetry is ever evolving. And boy, did my poetry evolve. It was ever changing. I wrote poems about death. I wrote love poems. I wrote poems about the abuse I got from my father and wanting to run away from home and escape poems. I wrote political poems and even some nonsense poems. I wrote poetry about my family, my hometown, my friends. You name it I probably wrote a poem about it. Because a poets work is ever changing and my muses were constantly changing. Like the seasons change from one to the other so did my muses. And my topics became as diverse as the people I met on the streets. So to this day I write and I will always write. Until I am too feeble to pick up a pen and sketch words down onto a sheet of paper I will write. And even then I’ll still be a poet because like in the days of old before we were blessed with the written word my poems will be passed on orally and visually through the pictures that I paint metaphorically. Because I have learned that despite whatever my 4th grade teacher thought I have I gift to give you. And my gift to you is my words and my ability to express them and share them. So I will stand up here and rock my words into this mic because as my mommy told me when I was 8 years old. I am poet and I have learned that my gift to you is my words.
This is very nice prose poetry... I like your point of writing as healing. Don't we all get started that way? I just read a lot of Pellinore's stuff and I hope he keeps writing too... and you too! I hope to keep watching for your stuff. Thanks for sharing halfpint04!
