AGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Agh.

A Night to Remember

Osama Bin laden died
the 1st of May; American citizens
lined up in front of the White House
to cheer and sing - death
has seldom been welcomed
with such open hearts, fists
in the air, hands joined with
ghosts between their fingers -

I wonder about the mothers,
fathers, sitting in front of their TVs

wondering if their sons and daughters
can hear the chanting from their pine boxes

sitting in the same silence -

for this death, no Americans
were harmed

and none have gone home,
some never will.

I tell my father, who says “There will
be another nutjob to follow in his place.”

I’m just having a hard time cheering -

death has never made me smile -

my fist knows everything but air
my fingers thinking of the
triggers and the dirt

the casualties in body bags
the casualties marred in the retinas

some things can’t be forgotten

what you were doing the day
the World Trade Center fell

but there are soldiers whose names
are worn away by the rain

Afghan civilians whose blood
will become a part of the soil and all
my kids will learn about is the numbers

I won’t be able to teach them
an Afghan mother’s tears, clutching
her dead baby, killed by an American
grenade

I won’t be able to teach them
what those picket signs meant, the thoughts
of their holders, what Hell is, why
they think American soldiers will
go there, why God should be thanked
for their deaths

I won’t be able to teach them
about how Korans could be
burned, cultures
marred by prejudice

I won’t be able to teach them
how a child their age
can grow up and have a funeral
the entire world celebrates

I could never, I don’t have the heart,
to teach them the meaning
of hate, of fists in the air
at one man’s death -

I could never teach them every name
every tear
how I cried when my friends went off to war
came home from Iraq and got sent to Afghanistan a week later -

some things don’t end
life is not one of them

but never have I seen it amount to something
so small, and death
so huge
and if I had to tell them
what hate was

I guess I could only show them this
fists in the air
screaming
chanting
singing the
Star Spangled Banner so loud
the entire world can hear
the power of our guns.

Aghhhh.

AGHHHH!

Reflection

Crunch time is over. Now its time for some lazy, half-asleep reflections.

I sort of repeated a lot of motifs and themes in my poetry. I feel like a lot of my poems are saying the exact same thing but in different ways. I don't really mind much, because my mind has been a bit limited lately, due to the stress of this entire month. A lot of this poetry isn't good enough to amount to anything, but there is almost always a decent line, and I can always compile and rewrite to end up writing things truly good.

One of the motifs were love poems. I wrote a painfully pathetic amount of love poems, and this is why: I never wrote love poems. People always asked me to write them love poems and I could so seldom do it, especially if I was in a relationship with them. I could write unrequited love poems, but never could I write love poems because I didn't want to seem foolish. I also started out this month thinking I could use this excuse to write and post public poetry to try and regain my girlfriend's affections during a small break - usually I wouldn't admit this, but I'm sort of sick of checking my words and how I appear for saying what is the truth. I've spent a lot of my life doing that and it is a habit I need to break - I do stupid stuff, I have stupid reasoning for things, sometimes my emotions are stupid, but that's pretty okay. Sometimes its just better to take a chance - usually it hurts more, but at least its a living sort of pain. Point is, love poems were always the hardest thing to write for me. They meant taking something risky and making something permanent out of it, a reminder of something I may miss one day, and in the present moment, its proclaiming something that is scary to say. 'I love you' can be a really hard thing to say, and by stretching that out into an entire poem, well, it can be really difficult.

I also wrote un-love poems. I reflected on my past a bit this month, and I think it's because my actions and circumstances could be contemplated and reflected on in relation to my past - how to love correctly and incorrectly and all that, and also there are just a sort of process of forgiveness going on, sort of. I'm working on it, letting go and all.

I also wrote about escape a lot - it was after realizing how little I live.

I wrote a few gay-ish poems, some about race and such, but mostly I focused on pretty internal concepts - its hard to really broaden my view of things right now when all I can really absorb myself in are AP exams and my own personal convolutions, which have only recently made themselves apparent to me.

Next year, I don't think I'm going to do NaPoWriMo in April. I think I'll have to hold my own little personal one in March, or at least type up all of the poems then and just post them in April. I'll figure it out then.

Anyway, I was just glad I finished, though some of my poems were pretty lazy, but nonetheless, its better than last year, and next year will be better as well.

Well, thats it. NaPoWriMo is over. I guess this blog will be for some ramblings in my head, and other poems. I think I need to keep up a pretty regular poetry schedule so that I keep improving.

That was fun.

NaPo 30 - Letting off Steam

3 MINUTES!!!!

I've got
love for this life running
laps in my veins

rainfall in the ecosystem of my eyes -
all of my emotions just come from
too much joy; I always know its there
a few inches away, I seek it everywhere

even when I say I want to scream
cry
shriek
run

its because I love this life
in spite of my anger and tears
I am a rainforest with steam rising
to meet the sky.

__________________
YEEEEESSSSSS!!
it may say I posted this at 10:57, but my clock says I posted it at 12:00.
I have completed NaPoWriMo.

NaPo 29 - Love Poem

I never wrote love poetry
then, because you can't write
and censor the imperfections -

I had a lot of love
clasped like crunched paper
in my tight grasp.

NaPo 28 - Courage

You held my hand like a wounded bird
that didn't know it was hurt, feebly flapping
away in fear -

I remember the imaginary stares
that burned into my back and my mother's
words, but words
never sounded so sweet as they did when
you reassured me -

I remember waiting long after
the movie to kiss when the theater
was empty and how every movement
required such careful contemplation -

what political stand was I willing to make?

I hold your hand every day now, and that
bird never fully healed because its
fallen from different trees - know that when
it reaches out so timidly for you, hiding
from the hate letters in their typewriter
brains - when I managed to
take your hand it meant that much
and more - my body always means more
than just what it does, and some days
I am still in awe that I can do it -

I'm not parading my pride anymore, there
are no politics in my stride, and I am still
that timid bird with feather fingertips but
I've nested myself in the sanctuary of your grip
for those days when I feel like the world
will crush me beneath the weight of
picket signs and crumpled hate notes.