Poetry Project
Overseas
I have never stepped foot in no-man’s land but I know what it’s like to be in a constant barrage by words tucked away in shell cases. I haven’t faced a general spitting in my face his voice a disgusting slur of domination and ultraviolet radiation but I have seen cause and effect drain the faces of those who used to be a beautiful mixture of ultraviolet and radiation. My lungs haven’t tasted the dust of Afghanistan but I am overseas. I’m not a soldier but there’s a war going on in my head there are bombs dropping into my heart sending shrapnel into my psyche. My head is a battle ground and I can only plead across enemy lines hoping that the guns of depression have forgotten to reload. I sing the body electric and all of it’s wonderful flaws and yes, I used the word flaws because there is nothing perfect about the way I exist and there is nothing beautiful about the way bullets make themselves a home in your skull. Under my Army jacket and makeshift armor are scars I can’t bring myself to explain there are nights I wish I could pull from my cerebrum, rip apart and burn away. Because under this brave face is a sleepless soldier tortured by the terrors of night; ghosts dance in front of my vision singing suicide songs and tempting fragile minds. Tell me this is not a war; the end is nigh, Pons will scream reminding me of the times I’ve killed my spirits and drowned my heart; early deaths, and premature demises souls shrinking under soil and crawling with the worms and I swear I will not become one of them but still my finger rests teasing the trigger. There isn’t anyone who will kiss your scars, no one patient enough to sit out every single night you feel like crumbling; don’t tell me this is beautiful because soldiers gasping in lime gurgling in the froth of their own inner linings girls suffocating on smoke boys asphyxiating on space and the diamond stars dotting their once-were hopes is sad instead There are teenage girls swallowing cyanide boys with shotguns spitting harsh words through their skull women with razor blades in place of friends and men tying nooses instead of tying knots- they don’t believe they are worth the air that fills their lungs, they are their own killers, sentenced to life on death row. I am a soldier of the mind marching down streets lined with time bombs and lion hearts, painted petals and forget-me-nots; walking with broken bones, broken spirits. No one wants a cracked doll - there is no beauty wrapped inside tragedy. Don’t tell me this is beautiful because there is no hidden beauty under shaking hands the Army jacket of my boyfriend’s sweater the way my air catches in my throat like it has second guesses on making an appearance; there is nothing beautiful about how the clock struck midnight and I had to congratulate myself on making it to Tuesday; and so I think “I will gather myself into myself again” and wish myself away under the moonlight and stars. The speed of light travels faster than that of a bullet but the distance spanning from Andromeda to my skull will make the distance seem shorter. By the time my Andromeda sees me, the clock would have struck twelve on Wednesday night. I guess my finger must’ve slipped. How come no one came to save me like the prince of Paper Towns? Maybe it’s because unless it’s written like rose petal lullabies it holds as much meaning as my breath to the depths of outer space. Unless it’s written like depression is a tick and anxiety is a quirk then the reality folds over onto itself like the intern who forgot the seventeenth step who stopped counting on sixteen and it will burn the heart out of you. There is nothing wrong with me. But there is something wrong with us. |
Poetry Recitation |
Growth as a Poet Reflection
The original perspective in my poem was relating the horrors of war to the struggle of mental illnesses. That perspective in the first draft made the poem sound like it was talking about the mental illnesses that are typically caused by war, such as PTSD. Specifically in the line, “There will be nightmares, there will be hot sleeves in the middle of the summer, and early deaths, premature demises.” It sounds like I’m talking about PTSD triggered nightmares, the long sleeves soldiers wear in hot deserts, and the early deaths some soldiers face. I had the idea of relating the two topics, and it turned into discussing post-traumatic stress disorder by the very first draft. I couldn’t relate directly to PTSD, so it made writing a poem increasingly hard as the drafts went by. By the time I had reached my final draft, I changed my perspective to something I could directly relate to. I thought about how I could show that having a mental illness is a war, rather than comparing the two side-by-side. My poem blossomed into a deep reflection on the struggles I experience, rather than talking about the experiences of others I have observed from afar.
Throughout my drafts, I made minor changes such as wording, length of sentences, and overall flow by adding or getting rid of words and phrases. But I made some very significant changes to my poem throughout my seven drafts. One of them was the changing the ending to my poem six times in total. In the very first draft of my poem, I wrote the lines, “And so I think, ‘I will gather myself into myself again’ to not burden the boy who would never kiss my scars; life isn’t a John Green novel…” I reference another poem, The Crystal Gazer, and I make a reference to John Green, an author. I used my favorite line from The Crystal Gazer, and I kept that in all of the drafts for my poem. I changed the wording around the quote, but I always kept it the same. I also used John Green as a reference because I feel like his books romanticize mental disorders along with physical illnesses, so I wanted to give a sly burn to the author. However, I felt like it was too obvious to state his name. I got rid of that idea entirely until the very last draft of my poem, when the opportunity to talk about him arose again. I turned those previous lines into, “And so I think ‘I will gather myself into myself again’ and wish myself away under the moonlight and stars.” In order to give emotional depth to my poem. I say I will gather myself into myself again, and got rid of the line about the boy who will never kiss my scars to give it a simplistic depth. I wanted the line to be more open for interpretation. To me, that line means bottling everything up to not burden anyone else with the troubles I’m going through. I use the line “And wish myself again under the moonlight and stars” to talk about suicide. So I tie in these ideas in a few very short lines that hold an abundance of meaning behind them, while looking and sounding pretty. The line about John Green was rewritten into, “How come no one came to save me like the prince of Paper Towns?” Paper Towns is a novel by John Green, and I decided to tie it into my poem because of the alliteration, and it allowed for that sly burn I wanted to add to my poem at first. It has two meanings, also. Not only is it an insult to John Green for turning negative experiences I have faced into a trend, but paper is very fragile and if a town was made of paper, then it’s extremely fragile and vulnerable to a number of things. You wouldn’t put faith in a town made of paper. And you can’t quite save someone from a mental illness, and if you can, no one is ever patient enough to save you. And so the “Prince of Paper Towns” in itself shows that the prince, the rescuer, is unreliable and could crumble under the pressure and turn away. I felt like my poem needed complexity that could be interpreted in multiple ways, and the complexity I added to the ending of my poem really gave me that emotional and intellectual depth I really wanted.
Another change I made in my poem was scattered throughout the poem, but I made important changes to how things were phrased and worded. One of the lines I feel like I changed the most was, “They don’t believe they deserve to take the air they breathe.” I feel like there wasn’t enough flow and meaning in that particular line that I felt was important and impactful. It took me six drafts to figure out what to do with that line. I think I faced a writer’s block when it came to that line. I didn’t want to use the word “deserve” or “take”, and those words felt bland in comparison to the rest of the poem. I wanted to use words that conveyed the emotions of worthlessness and emptiness, but I couldn’t figure out how to phrase it. It wasn’t until I rewrote my entire poem and got into a poetic flow that I figured out how to rephrase it. I wrote it into, “They don’t believe they are worth the air that fills their lungs.” And suddenly, this line had so much more meaning; it had the depth that I wanted. I feel like saying “fill their lungs” instead of “take the air” sounded emptier and sounded a lot more like the people I was writing about didn’t try to breathe, the air just flowed in and out of their lungs, not because they wanted it to. The line instantly became a lot sadder, and had a heavy feel to it. I really wanted my poem to feel sad and at times, desperate. And especially at the ends of stanzas, I needed to write some heavy lines that would leave an impression on the readers that would want them to keep reading on, so this change to my poem was small, yet significant to the flow and the overall tone of my poem.
The most important change I made to my poem was rewriting it. I didn’t change the lines I worked weeks on revising, but I knew my poem needed to sound more like a spoken word poem. I needed to drill rhythm into the bones of my poem, and I needed to make one stanza flow into the next seamlessly. And my original draft felt choppy, it felt like I was writing a poem just to get a message across. And that’s not the only thing that’s important about a poem, I feel like poetry needs to hold emotion, a message, and a logical flow to it. So I took it upon myself one night to elaborate and rewrite as many phrases as possible. One of my favorite lines in the entire poem was born from that last-minute revision. The lines, “Don’t tell me this is beautiful because there is no hidden beauty under shaking hands, bracelets and long sleeves.” Was then rewritten into, “Don’t tell me this is beautiful, because there is no hidden beauty under shaking hands, the Army jacket of my boyfriend’s sweater, the way my air catches in my throat like it has second guesses on making an appearance…” The transformation that took place between the original lines and the final lines felt so much more personal and I held those lines extremely close to my heart. As a poet, that was extremely important to me and it was important to give your audience a part of you in the poem. The original line was distanced, and it felt like I had no passion in what I was saying. I was writing it for the sake of writing it. And somehow, it stayed in my poem until the very last draft. Once the final lines were in there, it gave my poem honesty. You can tell when a poet is being honest by the way they speak and the way they describe things, and talking about my boyfriend’s jacket and my anxiety let my poem reach a new depth. In a way, this change was more for me than the flow of the poem. It definitely improved the rhythm of the poem because it allowed for a more honest spoken word performance, and it flowed with the way I rewrote my poem, but this change was extremely important to me personally. Poetry is my way of expressing what I can’t talk to people about. I take shelter in my boyfriend’s jacket, I feel hindered by my anxiety, and I feel self-conscious about my stutter. And it took me some time, but I realized that this is my poem and it’s not only my message, but my experiences in life. Because poetry is super close to my heart, and I decided to write this poem about something I very closely relate to. I felt like I needed to intertwine myself into this poem. And with that thought in my mind, my poem turned into a personal confession throughout the process of rewriting it. This is my favorite line, because it’s the line I hold closest to my heart. And this, to me, is the most important change I made to my poem.
Throughout my drafts, I made minor changes such as wording, length of sentences, and overall flow by adding or getting rid of words and phrases. But I made some very significant changes to my poem throughout my seven drafts. One of them was the changing the ending to my poem six times in total. In the very first draft of my poem, I wrote the lines, “And so I think, ‘I will gather myself into myself again’ to not burden the boy who would never kiss my scars; life isn’t a John Green novel…” I reference another poem, The Crystal Gazer, and I make a reference to John Green, an author. I used my favorite line from The Crystal Gazer, and I kept that in all of the drafts for my poem. I changed the wording around the quote, but I always kept it the same. I also used John Green as a reference because I feel like his books romanticize mental disorders along with physical illnesses, so I wanted to give a sly burn to the author. However, I felt like it was too obvious to state his name. I got rid of that idea entirely until the very last draft of my poem, when the opportunity to talk about him arose again. I turned those previous lines into, “And so I think ‘I will gather myself into myself again’ and wish myself away under the moonlight and stars.” In order to give emotional depth to my poem. I say I will gather myself into myself again, and got rid of the line about the boy who will never kiss my scars to give it a simplistic depth. I wanted the line to be more open for interpretation. To me, that line means bottling everything up to not burden anyone else with the troubles I’m going through. I use the line “And wish myself again under the moonlight and stars” to talk about suicide. So I tie in these ideas in a few very short lines that hold an abundance of meaning behind them, while looking and sounding pretty. The line about John Green was rewritten into, “How come no one came to save me like the prince of Paper Towns?” Paper Towns is a novel by John Green, and I decided to tie it into my poem because of the alliteration, and it allowed for that sly burn I wanted to add to my poem at first. It has two meanings, also. Not only is it an insult to John Green for turning negative experiences I have faced into a trend, but paper is very fragile and if a town was made of paper, then it’s extremely fragile and vulnerable to a number of things. You wouldn’t put faith in a town made of paper. And you can’t quite save someone from a mental illness, and if you can, no one is ever patient enough to save you. And so the “Prince of Paper Towns” in itself shows that the prince, the rescuer, is unreliable and could crumble under the pressure and turn away. I felt like my poem needed complexity that could be interpreted in multiple ways, and the complexity I added to the ending of my poem really gave me that emotional and intellectual depth I really wanted.
Another change I made in my poem was scattered throughout the poem, but I made important changes to how things were phrased and worded. One of the lines I feel like I changed the most was, “They don’t believe they deserve to take the air they breathe.” I feel like there wasn’t enough flow and meaning in that particular line that I felt was important and impactful. It took me six drafts to figure out what to do with that line. I think I faced a writer’s block when it came to that line. I didn’t want to use the word “deserve” or “take”, and those words felt bland in comparison to the rest of the poem. I wanted to use words that conveyed the emotions of worthlessness and emptiness, but I couldn’t figure out how to phrase it. It wasn’t until I rewrote my entire poem and got into a poetic flow that I figured out how to rephrase it. I wrote it into, “They don’t believe they are worth the air that fills their lungs.” And suddenly, this line had so much more meaning; it had the depth that I wanted. I feel like saying “fill their lungs” instead of “take the air” sounded emptier and sounded a lot more like the people I was writing about didn’t try to breathe, the air just flowed in and out of their lungs, not because they wanted it to. The line instantly became a lot sadder, and had a heavy feel to it. I really wanted my poem to feel sad and at times, desperate. And especially at the ends of stanzas, I needed to write some heavy lines that would leave an impression on the readers that would want them to keep reading on, so this change to my poem was small, yet significant to the flow and the overall tone of my poem.
The most important change I made to my poem was rewriting it. I didn’t change the lines I worked weeks on revising, but I knew my poem needed to sound more like a spoken word poem. I needed to drill rhythm into the bones of my poem, and I needed to make one stanza flow into the next seamlessly. And my original draft felt choppy, it felt like I was writing a poem just to get a message across. And that’s not the only thing that’s important about a poem, I feel like poetry needs to hold emotion, a message, and a logical flow to it. So I took it upon myself one night to elaborate and rewrite as many phrases as possible. One of my favorite lines in the entire poem was born from that last-minute revision. The lines, “Don’t tell me this is beautiful because there is no hidden beauty under shaking hands, bracelets and long sleeves.” Was then rewritten into, “Don’t tell me this is beautiful, because there is no hidden beauty under shaking hands, the Army jacket of my boyfriend’s sweater, the way my air catches in my throat like it has second guesses on making an appearance…” The transformation that took place between the original lines and the final lines felt so much more personal and I held those lines extremely close to my heart. As a poet, that was extremely important to me and it was important to give your audience a part of you in the poem. The original line was distanced, and it felt like I had no passion in what I was saying. I was writing it for the sake of writing it. And somehow, it stayed in my poem until the very last draft. Once the final lines were in there, it gave my poem honesty. You can tell when a poet is being honest by the way they speak and the way they describe things, and talking about my boyfriend’s jacket and my anxiety let my poem reach a new depth. In a way, this change was more for me than the flow of the poem. It definitely improved the rhythm of the poem because it allowed for a more honest spoken word performance, and it flowed with the way I rewrote my poem, but this change was extremely important to me personally. Poetry is my way of expressing what I can’t talk to people about. I take shelter in my boyfriend’s jacket, I feel hindered by my anxiety, and I feel self-conscious about my stutter. And it took me some time, but I realized that this is my poem and it’s not only my message, but my experiences in life. Because poetry is super close to my heart, and I decided to write this poem about something I very closely relate to. I felt like I needed to intertwine myself into this poem. And with that thought in my mind, my poem turned into a personal confession throughout the process of rewriting it. This is my favorite line, because it’s the line I hold closest to my heart. And this, to me, is the most important change I made to my poem.
Globalization
In this project, we learned about the topic of globalization. Another way to phrase it is the Americanization of culture. So we learned how products are being sent country to country, and how the economy is more global and less local. So we all individually researched something that relates to globalization; for example, I researched sweatshops and the benefits of those sweatshops. Some people researched WTO (World Trade Organization) to drug trade. And after we wrote an op-ed, we drew a political cartoon that explains the perspective of the op-ed.
Learning Reflection
I used to think globalization was a simple term; it's just the trade between countries. That's contrary to what I learned in class, where globalization is a massive and complex issues, with many branches to it and ways to interpret it. All I've heard about sweatshops all my life have been the negative sides of it, but I wondered why nothing was ever really done to fix that issue. After researching the issue closely, I learned that sweatshops are more beneficial than they are malicious. I learned about the interdependence of the world as they rely on allies and trade partners. My biggest take away was that globalization has many pros and cons, but we need it. It's not something we can give up, and that it's helping us move forward economically and technologically.
Op-ed reflection In this assignment, I had to move from writing that was generally fairly emotion driven to something informational and yet still emotional. I've either written emotion driven papers or factual technical writing papers in other classes. I've never done a mixture of the two, so the writing process of this was much different than any other forms of writing I've encountered in the past. I learned that it's pretty easy to mix emotion and facts into writing, but you have to have a concrete source of evidence if you make a statement, so you can't make statements based off of opinion. I could use this in my future at Animas in humanities, most especially in junior year. They'll expect you to have taken in all the knowledge given to you in sophomore year and remember it, and this op-ed was another step to climb on my way to senior year and even college.
|
Click here to read "Because They Work" |
African imperialism: Creative Historians
For this project, we studied the continent of Africa. We later chose a country we wanted to research and write a short story about. We then had to create an art piece for this project, in the form of a painting, a sculpture, and in my case, a spoken word poem. I did my project on two girls in a secret and romantic relationship with each other in the country of Cameroon in western Africa, a country where homosexuality is against the law in some senses and anyone can be subject to deadly hate crimes.
Click here to read my story, "Her Caramel Eyes"
Project Reflection For this project, we studied the imperialism of Africa and how it effects the people and the culture. Our assignment was to research a country of our choosing, looking at the culture and history and clothing and music and foods and society and family structure, all leading up to our short story.
I think my story conveys a lot of emotion through my usage of brief imagery and plot twists. "I laid back against her pillows, and tucked my feet under my legs to keep them warm. It was rainy season here in Cameroon, towards the beginning of November, so naturally, the rain fell in sheets against the windows. The night air seeped into her bedroom and created a cool draft. It was much warmer when she was cuddled up against me..." I like this section of my story because I feel it sets a warm mood in contrast to the rainy season outside of Carine's house, where Temima is warm in her lover's bed. I feel like having a sense of comfort or at least environment is important because then I can put the reader in the mood of the story, so they can really live the words I had typed onto a page. My weakness in this project was historical integration. Cameroon, especially in Yaounde where the story takes place, is a very modernized, westernized country. In a book I had read about the society and social structure of the country, they have a lot of western shops such as Victoria's Secret, which is a popular store for women to shop at. Because it's so modernized, it was hard to create a setting in modern Yaounde, Cameroon that had rich historical information. I tried to integrate some foods and slang into the story, seeing as that's the most common cultural thing that shines through the westernization. I included some preparation of food and characters snaking on some local fruits. The two most substantial revisions I made to this project was changing the end entirely from a very tragic ending to a simply more heartbreaking ending. This made my story stronger by having an ending that resonates in your head longer than a tragic ending. I feel heartbreak is something more people can relate to. I also had issues with present tense and past tense wording, so I went through the entire story and revised all the errors I had made to make the reading more understandable and enjoyable for myself and whomever would read it. I'm not sure why I had all of that trouble, but I did sweep through the story and fix that up as soon as it was pointed out to me. I did a challenge extension. I added additional ways of writing into the piece I had written; I had a motif, an antagonist, and an epiphany. A motif is a reoccurring thing in the story, like a dark stormy night, or constant mention of a character trait. In my story, it was Carine's caramel eyes. An antagonist is a force, which could take form as a person or even a law, that is going against your protagonist's (main character/hero) wishes that make it hard or impossible for them to obtain what they want. I had the public hate and looking threat of arrest hanging over my homosexual characters. An epiphany is a sudden realization, usually in the middle of something completely normal, or could be triggered by an event. My story contains an epiphany at the very end of the story which changes one of the character's perspectives in a heart beat and greatly effects her lover. The following cut from the opening of my story shows the antagonist force at work. ...She stirred from her resting place and looked up at me. “Are you sure no one is suspecting anything?” I nodded, “Of course. Everyone knows I visit you often; we used to see each other every day during our final year at school.” I explained. “Yes...” She sighed, “but that was in my bedroom, at night, where no one could see us.” “Sure, but girls visit girls. We talk about boys, we talk about clothing, we tell each other about stupid things our family has done.” I listed. She sighed, and I kissed her forehead. “Carine, no one will suspect anything. No one has.” |
Like a GhostI like to call myself a poet for the way I remember your eyes
how they shone and how they glimmered how they read my own eyes like every differed detail in pigmentation was a line in a book. If I am a poet then I fell in love with the way you looked in the morning and how your lips tasted like every summer we spent watching the stars rise and fall. I will call myself a poet for years to come because oh, god how your eyes still shone under moonlight like the stars came down and made themselves a home in the golden flecks of color simply outshone by the sun as it rises in your eyes and I would kill for one last look. Because when you left, you took a piece of me with you in your colors and in your stride as if I became a ghost to you, just like the monsters in the dark you’re so scared of my nails alike claws against your skin my teeth flawed and sharp. But hours ago this monster in the dark held your hand. And because of this, I am not a poet because a poet renders life through a lens of enhanced colors to brighten the whites and blacken the grey but you are already the brightest and you were already the blackest a poem in a person and I am merely describing you There is no poetic way to say how deeply I miss you and how deeply I still love you. For those caramel eyes mean so much to me. |