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Poetry is a hobby of mine, and has been off and on since high school. Like most of my art, few of my poems are ever completed. I turn some poems into songs, and some start off as songs. Some become the basis for larger works, related to the original poem only in ideas/themes and maybe a few words. Most spend their lives as unfinished wordplay on my computer or in my many notebooks.
Few of my poems are directly autobiographical; most are just related to a particular mood I'm in, or result from stream-of-conscious mindplay I love to do. Quite often the craft - as in the form, choice of words, rhyme scheme, meter - is the beginning of the life of the poem, which I think is a bit backwards from how many poets work. My poems, like all of my art, go through many revisions before reaching a "completion point" - but even a completion point or two doesn't mean I'll never return to a poem for more work.
In any case, be kind - I'm an amature and this is a personal site! (And I never intend to be offensive, to anyone.)
We are victims. But we must also recognize that we are not alone. We must avoid hypocrisy, and we must hold our own government accountable for the unjust actions done in our name.
Trouble being creative? Put your mediocre poems or lyrics into Google's tranlsator tools, and have fun. This is from an actual song I wrote, sad to say...
This comes from some brainstorming I am doing for my one-act opera. I've cut it from the opera for now because it doesn't exactly fit, but I like it, so I wanted to put it somewhere. One important part of the opera quotes Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet, singing:
White his shroud as the mountain snow
Larded with sweet flowers
Which bewept to the grave did go
With true-love showers
I've read that this might not originally have been Shakespeare's, but rather a slightly mangled popular song from his day. Regardless, I like the verse, and I've been writing some short verses of a similar style to be used as lyrics in parts of the opera.
Three great western religious traditions share a common ancestor. How many of our children know this? How many even know who this ancestor is? And who among us knows why he is important?
I wrote this after a special evening with a dear friend.
My poetry professor in college loved this one, primarily because a whole verse is a quote from Matisse talking about his approach to art. I've updated the poem to make it more web friendly.
Yes, I'm guilty of "break-up poetry," too! I once found a long poem, written on a sidewalk, about a man whose lover betrayed him, even though she always worried about him cheating on her. Still deeply in love, he struggled to understand her loss of love for him. His poem was appropriately written on the most cracked and broken sidewalk in the area - a sidewalk should be a firm foundation, keeping your world steady. I felt a connection with this anonymous poet, who seemed so alone.
Ahh, more break-up poetry. I found this in some of my papers the other day. My life will never be organized...
written soon after my 21st birthday
I understand many people's need for a "safe space" - a place where people similar to each other, or facing similar discriminations, can meet and talk without having to explain themselves, defend themselves, or answer challenges aimed at who they are. However, all-too-often in my experience, we hide in safe spaces - living, eating, and sleeping only with people who are "like us." Some people (and I try to keep myself from doing this, though I have) even start to define themselves only within these groups. Instead of, "Hello, I'm Christopher, an artist who currently loves Bjork", it becomes "Hello, I'm Christopher, a heterosexual, protestant, white, American, male." Yes, these may be true aspects of yourself, but don't limit yourself to them! And please don't hide - we need to be around each other, and try to live together, if we ever hope to get past our prejudices.
Anyway, as you can see, thinking about this still gets a reaction from me!
Written while I was in India, I was thinking about how life rarely takes you where you plan to go. I absolutely loved my trip to Tamil Nadu, India, but if you had asked me a couple of years earlier where I'd be - physically, spiritually, or emotionally - I would have guessed completely wrong.