As I walk through the automatic doors, I see the vivid colored labels jumping out at me like they want to shake my hand.
You can get everything you ever want in the store, in all stages of life.
From baby diapers to adult diapers, from training wheels to wheelchairs, and from potty training seats, to raised toilet seats for the elderly.
Aisles of candy, cookies, soda, frozen food, magazines, bread: you can have anything you want to eat. Decorate your homes with plates, tablecloths, glasses, and candles.
From celebration cards to sympathy cards, come into the store in any mood we’ll always take your money.
Make yourself feel pretty: make up, hairbrushes, scented deodorant, and perfume. But are you prettier?
Pleasure yourself with condoms, cigarettes, and alcohol. But are you pleased?
Anything I could ever want, but not really.
As I walk up and down the aisles late at night looking up into the reflection of my own tired blue eyes and ask myself Who am I? Why am I here? Who are these people around me? Am I alone? Seeking the truth, there is none. What will I buy? I don’t know what to look for.
When writing this poem, I really strove for meaning, and I found what I was looking for, and that feeling was only confirmed when my class, and my teacher were shocked at the deep meaning of this poem. After writing this poem I was further inspired to write because I realized that I can write poetry.
Since the beginning of the trimester, my poetry has improved in my opinion, exponentially. An example of this is with our first and last assignments. Our first assignment was to write a poem about the meaning of poetry titled "What is Poetry." Here is my first poem:
What is Poetry
Poetry.
Yes Words, Yes Meter, Yes Rhyme.
Read the Complex Truth.
Feel The Free Love.
Write the Truthful Expression.
No Rules, No Judgement, No Circumstances.
Poetry.
This poem was a very short, simple and an acceptable one, but after about 12 weeks of poetry class, this is my new definition of poetry in the form of a poem in my "What is Poetry II" assignment:
What is Poetry?
Poetry is me.
It’s the song I sing, it’s the drink I drink.
Poetry is my voice, screaming out loud and I’m hoarse
It’s the nerve of me to say something that shouldn’t be said
It’s the thoughts that I keep to myself that no one else knows
It’s the craziness I get because of the secrets that lie in your eyes
It’s the belief that I’m the person I need to get away from,
It’s the struggle to understand not what everyone wants from me but what I want from myself
Poetry is the reality
That I’m always looking over my shoulder
That I’ve got a bad feeling about my future
That there are white, concrete walls all around me
That I don’t know what to do
I’m not unhappy but I’m scared that there’s
No compass to point out the way
That I’m lost at sea and slowly drowning
And that day by day I’m losing my mind
Because I know you’re looking
And I know what you’re thinking
But it’s ok, keep pretending
I keep praying for sanity but everyday
I wake up in this strange world wondering
Why everyone thinks I’ve got it figured out
When I have no idea who I am
Or why do they think I’ve got everything
When I feel like I’ve got nothing
Wondering why I have to answer questions,
Wondering how I can get away from the insanity
Poetry is the dream
The dream of lying beneath a sky that matches the one in my eyes
In a world where no one’s alone
Where the wind blows through my sand crusted hair
And I’m sailing under that big smiling sun
This is the dream
Of lovers who lie together dreaming of a dream
Dreaming that their love is more than just a dream
The dream that somehow the dreariness of the everyday will end
And That I won’t have to dream of what you’re dreaming of when you’re alone
Where no one’s afraid to be strange
Where no one is fake for the sake of being real
People marching to their own drummers,
The dream that there no longer needs to be dreams
Poetry is the place I go
Where no one knows,
Where I can dream this dream
Where I can get things off my chest, blow off some steam
Who says I can’t?
Here I am, me, no need to impress no need to address
Who cares what some might say
I hate the past, I hate the future, I love the now
In this place, I’m the judge, jury, and the press, but I’m also me
this is the road, not the shortcut, you’re on the detour
The only way you can find it is if you can concede
That it’s not really their way or the highway
Join me, let’s runaway
Stay by my side I’ll show you the way
Mmmm Let’s smell the smells
And laugh and laugh because it’s a feeling we’ve never felt before
Poetry is it’s good to be free.
As you can probably see this poem is a whole HELL OF A LOT different than my first poem. To be honest, I really just wrote my first poem like that because number one I had no idea "What is Poetry." I framed it in a way where it could be quirky, and there would be nothing wrong with it. When I wrote that in poetry there are no rules, I didn't really mean it because I was restricting myself. Contrast that with my second poem. My second poem lets me express myself about my personal meaning of poetry. I certainly did not write that by following any guidelines at all, I wrote what I felt. That's it. It had more meaning to me, and I think it gives people insight about how poetry can have an affect on a person, and not necessarily what poetry should mean to them, but maybe it can give them an idea that poetry is literally anything you want it to be.
The thing that I am most sad about as I depart from my one term stint with poetry class is that no one will be pushing me to develop my poetry further. However, what I am looking forward to is that I will continue writing poetry that's meaningful to me, and can help me further understand and discover who I am as a person.
I want to take the time to thank Mrs. Lewis for helping me along this journey, and here's to my future writing poetry!
As mentioned before, I always thought poetry dealt with one person performing, and if there were to be multiple people in one single poem, that they would all be speaking. BUT, THIS IS WHY I LOVE POETRY SLAMS! The thoughts and strategies each group and/or team comes up with their own way of delivering. The pace, their tone, their pitch, their personalities, all come into play when performing a group poem. I love the fluidity of the poets as they perform. They signals, practice, and flow, must all be right, and it not the poem could possible be their worst nightmare. But groups in poetry slams become families. Yes, they have their goods days and bad days, but they are there for each other. Poetry may have no rules, but one rule I think it should have for group poems is to be “one”. 
