Given time and distance enough you can look back on yourself as a different person. Yesterday I looked back on a guy who studied poetry in college for 4 years. Strange, eh? Sounds a bit like a waste of time to me, but who am I to judge?
An interesting side-effect of moving is that I've had a chance to dig through boxes of memorabilia (read as "crap"), trying to decide what to keep and what to toss. Last night I came across a folder containing the poems that I wrote in college. I read through them and discovered something: I used to be a pretty decent poet. Did it do me any good to write poems for 4 years? I'll let you know in another 10.
I've decided to give some of these poems a second chance on this blog. Expose them once more to a potential audience of the whole world and an actual readership of...well about 3. Let me know what you think.
I'll start off with one that I believe is the truest that I've written. The names, places, objects, and events have all been changed to protect the innocent.
Compensating
It all comes down to the fact that I'm not great at anything.
Sneaking out behind the high school to have a smoke with Jim,
green-faced and weak-stomached, sucking in the cool.
Racing cars that we liked to think were fast down
Interstate 15 at 2 A.M.
Green-eyed blondes in short black skirts who say they are
my weakness,
but they have never seen my shoe collection.
Blue-eyed girls, brown-eyed girls, blue-eyed girls
and those other girls too.
The strut, that stupid swagger that chases me around
and trips me now and then.
A black leather jacket.
A quiet argument with my grey-haired dad
in his tie and spectacles and half-frown
and soft hands
and maybe just slightly wet eyes
and words.
And a half-assed begging apology.
3 comments:
Whew! Good thing you said something about your Dad having hair other wise I would have thought that was about you.
Its interesting. I like this far more today than I ever did in college (no offense, I didn't hate it then, rather, I appreciate it more now--insert some lame metaphor about life being like a river and you never read the same poem twice or some poetic bullcrap like that). You were always a talented poet, by the way.
Personally, I like to think those years as a "serious poet" were valuable. They've helped me take myself less seriously now.
i give it a yahoo rating of B+ or A-, just because i like you so much. :)
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