The Banta Blog

In the interest of challenging myself to explore writing in all of its forms, I decided this week that I would write poetry. I was tight on time and was up last week so late getting my short story in by the deadline for the writing club challenge I am partaking in. I thought, “poems are short” and that that would save me some time. I told myself I would write at least 5 poems and pick the best 5 to publish. That should be easy enough, right? They didn’t have to be perfect, after all this is the first poetry I’ll have ever really publicly put out there (outside of school, at least).

Well… WOW was I wrong. Poetry is such a raw and emotional form of writing that here I am at midnight, 6 hours before the 6 AM deadline with three poems and a haiku. None of them feel good enough to be proud of. It’s so hard to bare what’s inside of us in a form meant to evoke a similar emotion in a reader, but without telling them what we’re feeling. We use metaphor and meter and the occasional rhyme in the hopes that they’ll pick up this feeling inside and feel it a little bit themselves, too. And it’s brutally hard, both to convert from emotion to phrase, but also to sit with that emotion long enough to do so. And I’m not sure if I was really able to accomplish that this week, but does any beginner at anything master the art of a craft? Because that conveyance of sentiment is the essence of the art and poetry is most certainly a craft, with words as the tools to whittle away the extras until only the feeling remains.

But the deadline is the deadline. So here are three poems and haiku, written by a beginner, a noob who underestimated the challenge of chipping away all but the essentials and leaving a solid stone sonnet behind.

I Write You Letters

I write you letters every morning
In the hopes that we’ll grow closer
In the hopes that we’ll connect
In the hopes I’ll gain some self-respect

In these letters I bare you my soul
I tell you what I love
I tell you what I hate
I tell you what I do
I even tell you what I ate

I tell you what you are
I tell you who I am
I tell you to trust and have faith
And I always, always tell you you’re great

I ask you how you’re doing
I answer how I am
I try to use “I” and talk about “my”
Like maybe, maybe we’ll see eye to eye

I tell you my secrets
I show you my faults
I speak of your gifts
And I hope our love shifts

To one where it’s mutual
One where you love me
And I love you, too
One we’re together in all we go through

Because I know you better than you know yourself
And you know me better than I know myself
After all, we’re just two halves of the same brain
Or maybe we’re one, just split by the shame

I read your letters every night

Life_In_Code.py

SunsetS

The sun was supposed to set today
But behind the clouds and all the gray
I don’t really know if it did

But it’s darker now, and colder, too
Is it night or am I just feeling blue?
I can’t really tell either way

Because it’s “darkest before dawn” they say
But this darkness never seems to go away
And this dark mess in my mind will stay
Like the dark dress of my distress, I depress

So I pray “God Bless, I need rest from this test”
I need dawn to be drawn
I need light in my fight
But, most importantly,
I need
This day
To End

Haiku: On Writing

writing: hard from heart
stripped of armor and sword
like naked in art

And that was all I could come up with in the days and hours I spent thinking about it. There was a lot of blank page staring, wondering who would blink first, me or the page (or the pen). So in conclusion: poetry is f*cking hard, on the my mind, on the soul, and on the creative little kid inside of me. But I hope you’re able to feel what the words are saying. I hope some part of it talks to you, and says the things I can’t say directly. And if it hits for you, I’d love to hear about it. If it doesn’t, I’d love to hear that, too.