Tuesday, March 6, 2012

The Poem

[Thank you for all your support, even after such a long and dreary pause. I will be concentrating on short stories at the moment, as I have been inspired by work of Margaret Atwood. I am still searching to find, develop, expand and eventually perfect my style of writing~<3]


I think that when I first decided to write, I was much younger. In elementary school, we all wrote poems by ourselves; the first product of our creative young minds. For whatever twisted reason, I had chosen the terrorist attacks as a topic, and formed a few short, patriotic lines emphasizing the greatness of the country I lived in and the fearlessness with which we would pursue our enemies to satisfy the nation-wide vendetta. The people cried out for blood and I, a mere school child with about as much common sense and life experience as a piece of toast, fanned the fire (at least among the school faculty) with my words. My home-room teacher was delighted and, for reasons I couldn't fathom at the time, asked me to follow her out of the room one day.

I walked behind her quickly, basking in the glory of my conquest. Whilst I did not know yet what was to await me in the famed principal's office, I knew that it was certainly nothing negative. She didn't appear cross with me, nor had I done anything wrong (that I could think of). As nearly every attentive child, I loved the extra attention I got from adults, and so I stuck to her heels loyally like an excited, yet well-trained puppy. The walk there is slightly blurred in my memory, but I distinctly remember the office itself. It was smaller than I had imagined (I was only at the reception area, and not in the office itself, mind you) and filled to the brim with tall metal file cabinets. The stern secretary sat at the front desk and smiled at me. It was a smile I will never forget, quite possibly because it was the only time I ever remember seeing her smile at all. She certainly wasn't a cruel woman, by any means, but she was strict, or at least that's how I perceived her as a child. I must admit, the only times I managed to see or talk to her, was when she was on duty to watch us whenever our teacher couldn't manage, and that usually meant that she would snap at me to 'get busy' with my work or stop talking.

At the time, I was a very open child. I say 'open' because I want to avoid the term 'hyperactive', although I had been accused of being just that on quite a few occasions. No, no, my psychologist said, I am not hyperactive, nor do I lack the ability to pay attention. Moreover, I was selective about the things I chose to pay attention to. He used words like 'highly intelligent', for what its worth, but also threw in little phrases like 'passive-aggressive', which I would later discover from the unconcerned explanations of my mother. I learned a great deal about my own past from her, almost as though it were a movie. I like to compare my own life to a movie I watched as a child and didn't understand, then rewatched with my mother as an adult, finally able to grasp certain things that had been strange or simply overlooked before.

With the exception of that acknowledging smile, I was ignored for a few moments, as per usual. The adults would have their normal, adult conversations, several feet over my head, and I, the child, entertain myself by looking around the room. I spied with my little eye several things that were green, others that were red and many, many things in gray tones. Then, I gave up the 'I Spy' game because I determined that playing it silently with one's self was stupid and pointless. Even then, I was, to a certain degree, rather efficient. Then, I distracted myself by straining to listen in on what they were talking about, only to find that they had finished, and it was time for my big moment.

This 'big moment' was something I am liable to never forget, no matter how silly it feels in retrospect. The secretary, Miss Donna, handed me the yellowish, thinly paper that we always wrote on, and I recognized my big, jagged handwriting immediately. I had desperately tried to match my letters to the pale blue and red lines that decorated the sheet, but it still never looked like the template letters that we had always practiced with the school year before with Miss Becky. After that moment of surprise had set in, as my short attention span and memory had completely obliterated any trace of the poem, seeing as how it had been an entire week prior to this little show, I asked what I was supposed to do and was then promptly ushered to the desk.

I was given my instructions and, heart throbbing in my chest, I watched Miss Donna press the intercom button. This was the old me. Unlike the recluse and paranoid young woman writing down these very memories, the small poet was all too eager to share her work. I read my poem aloud as soon as the light flashed, pronouncing every syllable slowly and accurately, as my teacher had always taught us to do. I had never read my own work aloud, so it took a moment or two to get the rhythm just right. My poem was short and choppy, nothing like the one I chosen for our poem-themed "show and tell" earlier that month.  May by Sara Teasdale was a sweet work- the kind of poem that you read once in your childhood and somehow manage to remember bits and pieces of even in adulthood.
 My poem was nothing like May. Figuratively drunk with the power of being able to speak over the intercom system and impress people older than myself, little did I know that I would use my 'talent' to write about this very experience years later. This was the first time I had produced anything creative. It was the first time a product of my imagination had been able to manifest itself into something identifiable for someone other than myself. And the first piece of work I had ever grown to truly hate.

After I finished reading the poem, I was escorted back to the room by my teacher, all smiles. Everyone had heard me read my poem, from the students to the teachers and even the principal. I had produced something independently, individually, and they had paid attention to it (voluntarily or not). Nothing happened after that, in case my ambiguous wording implied that I had grown to hate my work because of some sort of criticism.

No, I'm afraid I have to disappoint. This was one of the few (possibly the only product of my brain) that did not undergo any sort of open scrutiny. I received no snide remark or constructive criticism, only a few 'congrats' and my peer's awe at the fact that it had been my voice over the intercom system that fateful morning. Just as quickly as the fame and pride washed over me like a wave, it disappeared again, as though being tugged away by an impatient moon. The only thing that remained was my poem, written in hideously pointy and aggressive handwriting spilling over pale blue and red lines on faded yellowish paper.  On the top, next to my equally hideously pointed name, was a sticker that portrayed a brown and white puppy in shorts and a T-shirt, wearing a baseball cap and smiling as happily as a dog could ever smile. This was one of those 'good job' stickers.

That piece of shit got a 'good job' sticker.
[To be Continued...]

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