Oceans

Oceans

If I had known then what I know now… I would have stopped and said something else. My mouth always gets me in trouble because it has No direct wiring to my brain; I speak only from my heart. In my heart I have love for everyone, but especially for her. Her love, is elsewhere, as always seems to be the case, but it’s passion that really counts, and I know full well that’s something she doesn’t lack. It’s just misguided, like a motherless puppy or a moth when you flick the light switch on and off rapidly, but who am I to be the judge of where she puts her passion (It’s not like I can be an unbiased judge of it anyway). She can love whoever or whatever she wants and I’m not the one who’s gonna stop her. You know, I back away and pull closer because that’s my weird way of showing I care, when I realized I’ve crossed too many red lines or haven’t shown my face in awhile. If the door’s open, you walk through it, and when it’s closed, you hold your head in your hands and cry until the right key-shaped tear comes out of your tired eyes, you use it to unlock the door, and the cycle of coming and going starts all over again. If I had known that the tides of love match the tides of the ocean so closely, I would have brought sodium and water together upon the shores of her heart, and I wouldn’t have waited to tell her how I felt, just embraced her and ignored the consequence that I may be alienating the closest friend I’ve never had. If I had known that every friend I’ve ever made, if every friend I have yet to make, was going to be gone before I was ready for them to leave, I would have been quicker, wiser, and would have said the words that have gathered so frequently on the tip of my tongue. If I had known that love, that friends, that everything just comes and goes like the waves of an ocean, and that if I try to stop, I’ll be washed away with it, too, I’d keep fighting, keep pushing, and keep loving, because natural forces, like love and like tides, I know now they don’t discriminate anyone. They affect us all, and that’s good to know, because I think love is rolling in.

Oceans was born from its first line, which was a writing prompt. This was the first poem where I was really excited to share it with people. I felt when I wrote this poem that it had the right similes, metaphors, was really descriptive. I had struggled with attachment at the time and this poem really put that out there for me. It still feels to have applicability now too, which makes it one of my favorite poems to read. The performance side of Oceans was poorly received though, making it more of a personal piece for me that I don't like to read much.

Poetic Debut: Videotape

Just to get everyone accustomed to how this will work, I will explain process. I will put up a poem here, and then provide a few sentences describing what I feel about the poem and what brought me to write it. First up is my poem Videotape.

Videotape
Recall a time when the words face and book were separate from one another. Remember a time when my and space actually had a space between them. Remember when Twitter was an onomatopoeia for a birdcall. Find the time when AIM meant to adjust position and trajectory for the sole purpose of sinking an arrow or other projectile into the flesh of the target. Do you recall when a Yahoo was a stupid person, when a Googol was an insanely large number, and when a Dogpile was a pile of dogs? When Wiki sounded like a Hawaiian word, not a last minute research site? When tube was a substitute for a pipe, and there’s obviously no such thing as a YouPipe. Remember when slang was a bad type of putting sling in the past, when everything single thing you ever said wasn’t hashed over in every which way and posted somewhere for you to regret it? Remember when you actually had to pass notes in class, and now you just need notes to pass your class? When a cell phone was something an inmate in prison would use while he’s in his one hundred or so square feet of living space, and he had to use the cell’s phone to call a friend, one time a day. Remember when a disc was a synonym for a Frisbee, and not just something you plug and played? Do you remember when a pirate was someone on the high seas, not someone in the lower parts of their house scraping pickings of other’s hard earned money off the lowest websites of the internet? Most of all, can you remember when video and tape came together in the same word, not just something that takes too long to buffer, a problem fixed with scotch, masking, or duct varieties? The little black box you placed in the perfect fitting slot to watch a favorite TV show? A reflection of memories. A view of the past. Makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you think. Rewound with a funny sound, but go back in time and remember what you have forgotten about yourself. Streaky lines of snow covering the screen. Carried in a black rectangular box six hours at a time, present all over the world and held close to the heart. Push PLAY and you see the chapters of my life, stories of my past, foreshadowing the future. Grainy sand screen to keep the picture in place. Nostalgia built up by the fact that you couldn’t see things from this angle before. A dying breed replaced by hard, impersonal, plastic disks to match the plastic people whose stories they tell, smaller and more compatible in the revolting “MODERN AGE.” Give me a videotape of the past because these can be changed, there is no “FINALIZE” function, like cutting a story off before it’s over, but rather, you can rewrite them to fit how you think your story goes. Awkward they may be, but they hold the stories of our past. Do not erase them, for the fear of losing most of our history is a price we can’t afford to pay. 

Videotape was a poem that came out of my first set "Too Pretty for Common Conversation." This one was one of my favorites to perform right off the bat, and the aggressive nature in the first half of the poem generally led to a strong reception from the audiences. I came up with the idea to write Videotape originally after being inspired by a Radiohead song of the same name, and then put it into action when I thought of how stupid some of the domain names for websites are nowadays. This poem has been interesting because I have usually broken it into two parts to show the more common break between writing sessions, as this is the only poem I have ever written on separate days. However, when it came time to perform, the flow actually felt more natural from part II to part I, so I rearranged them accordingly. This one established my writing skill and remains a favorite of the ones I have shared. 

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