Things That Don't Matter

I’ve decided I’m doing this again. Not right now, but like… soon.

So this semester I’m in my college’s (Northeastern) creative writing class. We started with poetry which is… not exactly ideal but whatever. So we had to write one shorter poem and one longer one. I was not convinced that either poem was any good, but today in class we went over our short poems and I got a response very different from what I’d expected. We went around the class and each read the poem of the person next to us, when it came time for someone to read mine a very pretty girl across the table from me audibly whispered to her friend, “This is the best one,” or something like that (we had all read each others’ poems before class), and also at the end of class someone came up and told me mine had been the best. I was a little taken aback as I had thought it was average at best and I still have problems with it but I guess it might actually be fairly decent. The longer ones we haven’t gotten to yet so I don’t know whether it’s as good, I highly doubt it though, I don’t like it much but it’s something.

Acoustic Reflex

I’ve been listening to all the songs
I didn’t write about you
And wishing there were songs
That you didn’t write about me.

____________________________________________________

Odyssey

Death once came for me
Death sounded like a kick drum
And a choked cymbal
And death looked like an airbag.

Death rolled me
I held tight as the world turned
Upside down, then right side up
And then stopped.

Death burned
The smoke stung my eyes
And choked me
As my dog cried.

But death didn’t get me
Cautiously I explored the feeling
In my limbs and tested their movement
As shock faded the radio played.

My dog thrashed behind me
Her leash caught and tangled
As I released her she bolted
And together from death we ran.

Soooo… yeah. Not much else really. College is fun, most of the time. Might have a short story or something soon, hard to predict really.

Okay, so I was thinking to myself, I’m really bored and don’t really have anything to do, I guess I should write an update because I haven’t in like forever. Then I remembered that I haven’t yet watched today’s Daily Show and Colbert Report, so I’ll be getting to work on this in another 40 or so minutes (which you of course won’t notice because it’ll all go up together at once, but there is actually a 40 minute gap in between the end of this sentence and the beginning of the next one, which will probably be marked by a rather abrupt change of topic). Alright, so I finished The Daily Show and Colbert Report, but now I’ve remembered that yesterday I started playing Half Life 2 over from the beginning again, so there’s another gap of probably a few hours here. Not actually a few hours, I got to Ravenholm which I’ve always kind of hated and stopped there for now. Thing is I don’t really feel like writing anymore, rather I feel like watching something again, so here’s another gap of probably at least 40 minutes. Annnnd actually it was 2 hours because I chose to watch High Fidelity on Hulu which was I would say a good use of two hours and I highly recommend it. Okay, now I’m really going to get down to it. So far this summer I’ve… well I went to Italy and England but no one wants to hear about that. It was fun, the alternate settings might get used in some things I write, that’s about all I have to say as far as that goes. Summer’s gone back to being what it usually is, hot and boring. I came back hoping it could at least not be boring, but I should learn not to hope for things because it never works out.

Because I went on vacation immediately after graduation and did my best to forget everything about home while I was away it wasn’t until the other day that it really sunk in that I’m done with high school. September will come, and I won’t go back. I won’t see those teachers again, I’ll not fight my way through those halls, or ever again talk to the people I only sort of knew. High school is I would say almost entirely responsible (you could say to blame) for my current personality and mindset, and I’m leaving it all behind. It got me started thinking about how things change, and saying that is so cliche I sort of flinched when I typed it. But really though, I’m completely different than I was four years ago when I was a freshman, everyone is. Someday I’ll be different all over again. Someday I’ll come home and my dog won’t be there to greet me, someday home won’t be this house anymore. It’s… scary.

That’s about it then I guess. I have this one story I’ve been working on for a while but I’m totally stuck and it might be a while longer before I get it finished. In the mean time I might throw together a ye olde (meaning like a year or so ago) style 2-3 page lighthearted conversational type thing. I haven’t done one for a while, the last one would probably have been The Proposal all the way back in October, and I’ve been feeling kind of like getting back to that sort of thing.

I wrote this poem a few days ago but I still haven’t decided how I want to end it. There’s two versions and so far out of the people I’ve asked the votes are split. So what I’m going to do is post both versions here, and then you can vote for what should be the final version. (If I get the polling thing to work right.) I’ll probably totally ignore the results but I’m interested to see regardless.

Because

A)
Every day as I walk through town
I pass this intersection.
It has a stop light
And on each corner there is a button
Which turns all the lights red.
Every time that I walk past
Even though I don’t have
Any need to cross in front of traffic
I push this button.
And all the cars have to stop.
I push this button, because
If I push it enough
One of these days
It will stop You.

B)
Every day as I walk through town
I pass this intersection.
It has a stop light
And on each corner there is a button
Which turns all the lights red.
Every time that I walk past
Even though I don’t have
Any need to cross in front of traffic
I push this button.
And all the cars have to stop.
I push this button, because
If I push it enough
One of these days
It will stop You.
And then I’ll have had my revenge.

[poll id=”3″]