I’m no poet… and I know it

So the night before last there was this writer’s open mic night. I attended. I read two poems. One about Bart and one about peeing. Apparently, everyone liked them. I got third place. And that’s dangerous.

See, it’s dangerous because then I got it into my head that I’m a poet again. This happens periodically, where I have this great burst of crazy that can only be expressed with the

broken lines of

free

verse

poetry.

But I’m not a poet. Really, I’m not. I’m a fiction writer, and a blogger, and occasionally an essayist. Poetry is something that should be reserved for those of us that drip flowers from their tongue and ink straight from the arteries surrounding their heart. I am not one of these people. My poems are just barely contained rants broken up strategically so that they appear to be what they most assuredly are not: poems.

This faze will pass, I’m sure. Sooner than later, I hope. The problem with my writing poetry (or whatever it is that I write) is that something about those strategically broken lines opens something in me. It forces me to look at things differently, and reevaluate how I feel about people, events, myself. And it always comes just when I thought I was secure. Safe. Safe. Secure. I said it more than once. That means something bad is going to happen.

The funny thing about my non-poetry is that it’s the most honest I can possibly be without actually saying anything straight out. I reveal more through twenty to thirty lines of nonsense than I do in a 300 word blog post or a two hour Facebook chat.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this. All I know is that there is a dance tomorrow night. Semi formal. I’m wearing a dress. My black one, the one I wore to two homecomings in a row even though that’s supposed to be some sort of horrible female faux paus. And I don’t know why I’m doing this.

That’s a lie. Yes I do. What I don’t know is what’s going to happen. And that really freaks me out, because up until this point I’ve had complete and total control over what has been going on in my life, which is rare. Sure, it’s because I don’t actually have any idea what’s going on half the time with the people around me, but at least I’m in control.

That’s another thing about poetry. I don’t have any control over it. That sucks. Because sometimes I’ll write something, and then I’ll look at it, and realize it’s true, and hate myself for it. And then I’ll be mildly impressed that my subconscious has managed to dig something like that up. And then I’ll get lonely because I remember that one of my best friends is being deployed to Afghanistan in January even though Osama’s dead and my other best friend is home without me and my other best friend won’t talk to me because apparently I’m no longer cutting it for him.

See, this is what poetry brings out in me. The self pitying. The angst I like to pretend I left in my 8th grade journals. The deep, clenched loneliness that can’t be lifted no matter how many Reeses Pieces I consume, and no matter how good Ryan Reynolds looked on the cover of that GQ magazine. Because when it comes down to it, even after the

strategically broken lines,

and the

sassy inflection

sometimes I’m still sad. And I don’t want to be sad anymore. I just haven’t found the right combination of things in order to maintain a more consistent good mood. But I think I’m getting close.