Dreamwriter

Today I realized that despite my intentions at the beginning of the summer to keep writing (since I now have time), I haven't written anything since summer began! The last poem I wrote was in May, and my primary goal to continue writing the book I started for my graduation project, called Dreamwriter, has been forgotten about.

I started writing it after several scrapped attempts at other storylines sometime in October of last year. The idea is a combination of two pieces of inspiration, one from a couple years ago when running through potential story ideas in my head, and one while I was listening to the Air cd Talkie Walkie and let my imagination wander through a series of perfect images during the song "Universal Traveler." These images led to a quickly typed prologue which I decided I would build into my story. The only problem is that I wasn't really sure how to follow up the prologue, so I simply wrote nothing for quite a while. It wasn't until February that I actually began to write again. Sporadic bursts of writing culminated in a 25 page product to show to the judges of my project in early May. Still, just because I finished the project didn't mean I didn't want to finish the story. I will refrain from giving story details here because I'm still not sure if I like Part 1, which could change the outcome of the rest of the story.

Blood and Honey

This poem I wrote and submitted for the April/May anonymous poetry contest at Café Poetica and as the contest just ended, I can now post it here. This one won the contest and my other one written at the same time came in second, but I'll post that one later. Blood and Honey won with a perfect score, as every person who rated it gave it a 5/5. So obviously I'm pretty proud of this one. It's a sonnet, but I combined both the Italian and English forms.

Blood and Honey

The pages strewn across the desk of time
Shall quake before the writer's gilded pen
The likes of which no prior age divined
And nevermore will grace this world again
In infancy, yet born to wield the words
To shatter cities, to turn the tide of wars
To wash the heart with melodies unheard
From poet's pen shall blood and honey pour.
So fragile human hearts and minds do prove
And wind-swept words erased before they're writ
By apathy, incumbent on the throne.
These scattered skeletons shall never move
No blood nor honey shall his pen emit
And soft and gentle melody unknown.

Sunrise

I wrote this poem a little while ago when I stayed over with my friend Jon and we stayed up the entire night watching movies and drinking Mountain Dew. We wanted to watch the sunrise, so when it came, we got our coats and went out in the near-freezing morning (possibly below) and sat on his swings and waited. It was cold but completely worth it. So many thoughts and emotions went through me and they seemed contradictory. So when I wrote this poem the next day I don't really feel like I captured it accurately but I never edited and now I cannot do so. But I think it stands alone fairly well. The poem is obviously about more than just the sunrise itself.

"Sunrise"

Sleeplessly awaiting the dawn
I blink away the temptation
And emerge into the world of in-between
No longer dark, yet cold and dim
Breathlessly anticipating the portrait
Of man's destiny, written in the morning sky.

I do not speak a word, but swing gently
Back and forth to the sound of the sunrise
Complete serenity, restless uncertainty
And the in-between.

Stuck in a world between light and dark
No glorious transition
But a time of neither
And as the sun breaks the horizon
I cannot help but stare.

First Sign of Danger

(This one was moved from my other blog because I was advised that two blogs are kinda pointless. But I figured I'd at least salvage this post.)

The other day I was driving along the highway when I noticed a road sign along the edge of the highway that was obscured by some hanging branches. I don't remember what the sign said, but it started to get me thinking. I wondered why nobody would bother to remove the troublesome branches and make the sign visible again on a busy highway. Surely it would be noticed and it certainly could not have happened suddenly.

The only possible reasons I could think of would be laziness or an inattentiveness to the very basics. A fundamental thing like a road sign can seem trivial but at that moment it underlined and reflected the sick state of the fundamentals of the world. On a larger scale, the basic values of life, the basic codes of conduct for any forum, business, political, or otherwise, and the basic attitudes of society have been obscured. In many pieces of literature, the sickly state of society often is symbolically represented in other forms of disease. So the attitudes which deemed that road sign unimportant seem to label the basics of life unimportant too.

This is probably the first of many observations on society, but I'll just present the metaphor for now and describe its implications later.