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The poem in question: A Day In The Life Of

I wrote this poem while sitting in a Book of Mormon class at BYU.  I was sitting on the left side of the classroom, near the back, staring out the window at the falling snow.  I have the original handwritten copy, in blue ink, and it surprises me how little change there is from that copy to the final version.

Plotwise, the poem treads familiar ground: trying to cast off inner demons, referencing outside help, and putting my thoughts into poetry because that’s the only way I felt I could truly express myself.  Really, many more of my poems than I realized do this.

The style is cobbled together from other poems I’d written, notably Cried Out (the second stanza), disillusion (the fourth and fifth), and various couplet-oriented rhyming ones (the third).  I think this was my first attempt at mixing styles, and I think it came off pretty well.  It is like a combination of different parts of me, cobbled together to make a whole.

I’m don’t recall how I felt about them 16 years ago, but today, I really like the lines

non-realization of the lack of the quintessential
goes forgotten and unlooked for in the bustle of normalcy

It is indeed a “clever ploy” to get us to lose ourselves so much in everyday life that we don’t look for something more, or indeed realize that there is something more.  There’s hope at the end, though: the last stanza is a reference to the final Calvin and Hobbies strip, which always brings a tear to my eye whenever I read it.

Interestingly, the web version of this poem seems to be missing a line.  It’s not in the original handwritten copy either, but it is in my other copies.  I assume it was some sort of oversight, but I’m not sure if I’ll correct it.  After “a seed sown in the hidden cracks” it should read

planted discreetly

I assume I added the line to more closely match the style of disillusion.

There are some scribbled out words and phrases in the original copy, and unfortunately I can’t make out what all of them said.  It looks like I removed the word “further” from a line and changed “speed” to “incur.”   Other scribbles are indecipherable and lost to time.  The last stanza originally read

The snow still blankets the ground around me
Leaving a new memory, yet to be discovered.

I prefer how it turned out.  Overall I really like this one.

Update 6/27/2016: Here is an image of the original handwritten text:

The poem in question: is here in this commentary, as promised before.

January 29, 1998.  This is just pure melodrama.  Heartfelt melodrama, but still melodrama.  I like the oblique references to Cried Out and Insincerity.  I cringe a little at poor teenage me who was so distraught over the never-ending battle against lusty thoughts.

I think this is the part where
I say something completely heart-wrenching
and you cry out in pain for me
but I’m the only one here to console myself
and I’m no good at consolation
just ask that guy at the supermarket
I’ve never consoled him
the fact I’ve never met him is totally
beside the point
that’s not what I’m trying to illustrate here

I am forsaken
not really because I know you love me
but sometimes I feel that way because of
what I’ve done
how can I ever get rid of these thoughts
they return to taunt me constantly
I can never be free
they’re out to get me to make me lose control
of everything I’ve worked for strived for loved for
sometimes they succeed

I am plagued by the constant reminder of
my past and the difficulty of
the present and the shadows of
the future

I need a bloody rewind button or
maybe just a good slap to the head
and some words of encouragement
and an I love you

someone save me from myself
I cannot do it on my own
I need guidance from another
but I so often misapproach the possibilities
and stumble blindly where few have tread

I’m so tired of being afraid
of never knowing what’s coming next
what bombardment lies in wait
licking its lips in anticipation
for my demise at its hands
please oh please oh please let me be

the tears are forming now
I can feel them burning within me
but they can have no real release
not one that means anything
I’ve forgotten how to truly weep
maybe I should relearn

my wall is thick and I am lonely
I yearn for you to hold me
tell me it’s okay
tell me I’ll make it
another day

please

The poem in question: is only here, on this blog, in this commentary.

On January 8, 1998, I tried to write down my thoughts in a poetic-type form, but without much attempt at polish.  I did the same thing again three weeks later, which text I’ll disclose in the next commentary.  First, the text:

I’m sitting here thinking about life
and where I’m headed with it
it’s a difficult puzzle
one of those five thousand piecers
ages seventeen and up
most things are there and stable
but some I just don’t know about
I try to reconcile with myself
but I’m a tough negotiator

I love her so much
sometimes it doesn’t seem like enough
even I hurt
even I cry
sometimes
I thought I died long ago
somewhere clouded in the past
I found myself somewhere in her
I hope the void can be repaired
I yearn for her presence
maybe I’m crazy

I try to make myself believe
it’s not me it’s not me it’s not me
I try to believe it’s the right thing
to trust in what I cannot see

she said a way with words
I said sideways
she said it’s good enough
thank you
you made my day

myself infuriates myself
why did I allow myself to be
so blind so misled so utterly unable
I try to remedy the situation
I try to repair what I broke so many times
at least I’ve finally come clean
they know now what only I knew

he says sometimes music doesn’t cut it
you gotta weep
I don’t know if I can or not
I try and sometimes it works and sometimes not

I’m just profoundly frustrated by all this

all my hopes and fears and dreams are locked away
only she can truly penetrate my demesne
she has to search thoroughly for me
but when she finds me the reunion is wonderful
I don’t know where I was before
or rather I do and I don’t want to recall

sometimes it isn’t fair
maybe I’m just not seeing the big picture
I wish I could but I’m glad I can’t
I’d probably be too overwhelmed anyway
and heaven knows I don’t need that now

O do not forsake me is my cry of late
I don’t like the idea of being forsaken
I like the idea of being loved
it’s so much more fulfilling than the alternative

I’m just one big paradox
I can’t even begin to explain this one
maybe I’ll find my answer someday
sooner than I expect

it’s so hard to accept but I think I can manage
if not oh well
no big thing
there’s always tomorrow

These are mainly just the ramblings of a teenager, with doses of angst, self-pity, and longing, with some sappy only-my-girlfriend-gets-me thrown in for good measure.

Because of the free form and lack of effort toward any real structure, I never really considered this text, and “Three Weeks Later,” to be “canonical” poetisms.  They’re not included in my master poetisms document or my green notebook, and I don’t know if I’ve ever even shown them to anyone, except maybe my wife.  I thought about keeping them that way, but in the spirit of not being embarrassed about old writing stuffs—and to have a backup of the text on the interwebs, I suppose—the text is now here for all the people who visit my blog to enjoy, or at least read.

As for the content, there are references to then-recent poems my pathetic attempt and O do not forsake me.  There are silly phrases like “one of those five thousand piecers / ages seventeen and up.”  This was written about a month before my 18th birthday, and I think it’s a little funny that I thought my puzzle of a life was difficult, but that I was just at the right age to tackle it, though not without fear.

The line “I’m just profoundly frustrated by all this” is taken directly from R.E.M.’s “Ignoreland,”  while the lines “he says sometimes music doesn’t cut it / you gotta weep” are a reference to Paul Simon’s “The Cool, Cool River,” which is still one of my favorite songs.  There was a time when I had printed out a portion of the lyrics for display:

And I believe in the future
We shall suffer no more
Maybe not in my lifetime
But in yours, I feel sure
Song dogs barking at the break of dawn
Lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm
And these streets
Quiet as a sleeping army
Send their battered dreams to heaven, to heaven
For the mother’s restless son
Who is a witness to, who is a warrior
Who denies his urge to break and run
Who says, “Hard times?
I’m used to them
The speeding planet burns
I’m used to that
My life’s so common it disappears”
And sometimes even music
Cannot substitute for tears

There is also the familiar theme of repeated struggle with my inner demons and wondering if I will ever be good enough to overcome them.  I get the sense that I felt like I failed so many times that success seemed impossible, or at least undeserved.  But I do like that at the end I arrived at the conclusion: “I think I can manage / if not oh well / no big thing / there’s always tomorrow.”  It implies an acknowledgement that sure, life is hard, but it’s worth living and hopefully has more ups than downs.  No matter how many times I do fail, I can try again, or as more eloquently put by Professor X in the movie “Days of Future Past”: “Just because someone stumbles and loses their path, doesn’t mean they can’t be saved.”

The poem in question: O do not forsake me

This is one of my poems that I thought was good then, and I still think it’s good now, and am not ashamed of it.  (I’m not really ashamed of any of my past works now.  I’ve entered the stage of life where I can look back and recognize the silliness, sweetness, stupidity, and self-aggrandizement of youth without too much embarrassment.  And by youth I mean longer ago than yesterday.  The recent past can still be recent enough to sting.)

This poem is quite simply a plea to the Almighty for help with life, though I suppose it could be just a plea for support and help in general.  It starts out examining regret for wasted time or poorly made choices, and yearning for what might have been.  This is something that I certainly still experience, and I expect that everyone does to one degree or another.  There’s always something we feel like we could have done better, or just differently, and that the outcome may have been an improvement on our situation.

From there it starts a descent into questioning: “Is this worth it?  Am I going to come out of this whole?  Am I alone here?”

Finally the questioning turns to despair, in the form of comparison to everyone else.  I touched on this briefly in my last commentary when I mentioned “the inevitability of not always being perfect, while thinking everyone else is.”

you look all around yourself and
everything you see is in place and
you’re not and you can’t see why and
it hurts

This is something that I think everyone deals with on some level.  For the past several months I’ve been working with one of my boys on the concept that just because someone else has something or gets to do something, it doesn’t mean that it’s unfair that you don’t have or get to the the same thing, too, and that’s okay.  It’s a difficult concept for a six-year-old to grasp, and I’m not sure how much easier it gets; as we grow we just channel the emotion differently, or prioritize alternative perceived inequities.  For my son, it’s something like “Why does my sister get that treat and I don’t?  IT’S NOT FAIR.”  For my seventeen-year-old self, it was probably something like “How come no one else has a problem controlling their thoughts about hot girls?  IT’S NOT FAIR.”  Today it’s “How come my friend saw the new X-Men movie on opening night and I had to wait two weeks?  IT’S NOT FAIR.”

In any case, the emotional burden can be, and often is, very real, hence the interspersed, repeated cries of “O do not forsake me.”  The idea that even though life is not perfect, and oftentimes it is really really hard, there is someone there to help during the bad times is comforting, because as I said,

I’ll never make it by myself
oh please have mercy on me

Now a bit about the writing style.  I really like what I did here.  The rhyming patterns, as well as the alternating stanzas ending lines in “and” and “or,” please me.  I also like the narrative progression.  The complete lack of capitalization or punctuation also works to emphasize the lost, lonely, and overwhelmed nature of the speaker.  This is only offset by the word “O,” which to me invokes the symbolism of a higher power being greater than the petitioner.  The only thing that bothers me a little bit today is the final line “before it grows too late.”  It reminds me of the Primary song I Am a Child of God, the tone of which doesn’t fit with my poem.  I don’t recall if I made the connection when writing the poem, but I suspect that it was kicking around in my head somewhere.

Finally, the title is probably a nod to the They Might Be Giants song of the same name, though definitely not of the same subject.

(Speaking of the self-aggrandizement of youth, it’s totally different than the self-aggrandizement of the present, wherein I marvel at and boast of my past awesomeness.)

After a brief hiatus from poetism commentary, I have returned.

The poem in question: master yourself

This poem is, not cryptically, about being in control of yourself and thinking before you act.

The bulk of my poem writing occurred during my late teenage years, and as a Mormon youth—specifically, as a male Mormon youth—I was constantly bombarded with messages about the importance of chastity.  We used to say, only half-jokingly, that it was impossible to have a church lesson for the boys without somehow making it about sexual immorality.  I suspect that is at the very least the oblique subject of the poem, i.e. resisting those “carnal desires”:

that’s what you’re taught to think you know
and there’s good reason maybe

I’m sure that the Book of Mormon’s Mosiah 3:19, a verse I swear I heard quoted every Sunday, was in my mind:

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

The “natural man” is, of course, our inner lusty self.  Today, I like to think that it is not so limited in scope.  More broadly, I think that if you just do whatever you want without thought of whether you should do it, and with no regard for consequence, eventually your view of right and wrong is skewed to the point that right and wrong no longer exist for you, for all intents and purposes.

it might be just another thing
that occurs in your daily life
you’ll never know the difference
between happiness and strife

I also still find it true that you need to suppress your dark urges, though perhaps “suppress” is no longer the word, or action I would use.  I think more apt is acknowledgement that you aren’t perfect, but mature enough not to act on every whim that comes to mind.  I find that if you admit to yourself you have faults and accept it as a fact of life, while making efforts to improve, you’ll fare a lot better than by punishing yourself for being human.  This also helps to alleviate, or possibly even eliminate, the difficulty of “[maintaining] the mask / that everything’s cool under control.”  If you realize you are just a regular person doing your best, you don’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not.

In typical teenage fashion, I evoked emphatically excessive imagery to convey my point:

let the darkness burn in fire

I’m really not sure what that even means, but now I’m imagining Sephiroth standing in the middle of the flames of Nibelheim.

My self of today is amused at my 17-year-old self, full of experience and wisdom:

I’ve traveled both roads you see
so I’m here to give opinion

This attitude definitely comes from the constant morality lessons, and the inevitability of not always being perfect, while thinking everyone else is.  Nearly 17 years later, I have finally realized that everyone has problems, and generally no one’s problems are so unique that they are alone in their suffering.  It can still feel lonely and overwhelming, though, and we seek validation of the fact that we are not alone, which is not always easy to find.

Finally, I cringe at the “maybe/baby” rhyming.  It’s humorous cringing, though.