Meanwhile

In class tonight, I had the pleasure of having a couple of my poems critiqued. I have never taken a creative writing class before, because I've always shied away from creative writing types, particularly poets. I have found the few that I've met to be insufferable, egotistical assholes. That said, I have realized that I have unfairly judged all creative writing types based on a select few, and that there are people out there who are interested in improving their writing as opposed to just being praised for it. Fortunately, my class is full of people who are there for a multitude of reasons, and all of them are remarkably full of insight.

Here's one of the poems that I turned in for our workshop:

Meanwhile

in Paradise,
God sat on His golden throne,
staring at the children
down below His clouds.

One of them
had always believed
He had black hair
and was rotund,
wearing a red shirt.

“No answers are given
to imperfect beings,”
the teacher told them,
her habit wrapped around her
like tiny black hands,
“only in Paradise
will your questions
be addressed.”

The others nodded.
The girl in the corner
began counting her granted
breaths on her skinny fingers.


I cheated and turned in two poems that I wrote years ago. As a matter of fact, both have already been published. But I can no longer bring myself to show people a very rough piece of writing, unless I've been working on it for a long time and have made absolutely no progress with it. When the time came to write something for this assignment, I really got mentally blocked. Everything that leaked out of my pen was total crap. So I went for something that wasn't so crappy (well, in my opinion).

I was very nervous about the whole thing. I'm not shy, but I was anxious about my poems being completely ripped apart and ridiculed. I honestly didn't think people would "get" them, because I feel at times that my poems are too obscure (and not in a good way). So I was really happy to hear that everyone got them, and not only that, people had theories about them that I hadn't even considered.

All of this has given me a renewed sense of self-confidence and a desire to revisit some of my old poems to see if I can make them into anything. I'm sure most of them are lost causes, but there might be a splinter of something interesting in a few of them at least.

Also, my lens came in today. It's a huge black hunk of magic, and I can't wait to really play with it.