Where Be Dragons?

To My Brother Cain- A fictional poem for worldbuilding

The poem below is written from the perspective of a fictional character for the purpose of worldbuilding in a larger story. I often write poetry to practice perspective taking with my characters, and to help build my understanding of their personalities, inner thoughts, and struggles.

To My Brother Cain

You say you wish things could go

Back to the way they once before

To see us brother’s again

Wo…

Not an Enemy but an Ally- A Poem

Someone close once said to me…

  “In every life memory, there are mistakes…

pains, regrets, and anger.

  Things that tear into the heart,

corrupt the soul, and darken the energy.

  The only way to be free of this oppression,

is to leave these things in the past,

and leave the past as it should be… behind you.

  Not to be forgotten, nor watched like an enemy,

wary for the cold knife of cowardice,…

Rewind,

everything runs in reverse.

Don’t fall off the cliff

Wasn’t I here before?

Hands gripping the steering wheel

Metal screaming in warped twisted wails

A moment’s decision to take

The span of a heart beat before you decide

Don’t fall off the cliff

Warning words spill from

Untrained lips, so serene

Don’t turn left

Why is it only in dreams that I see?

Only in my head that I hear?

Don’t turn…

Anxiety and suffering do not define your success. Learn to love and feel proud of your writing, even when editing and receiving feedback, and your craft will improve along side your daily life.

Every day on my Twitter feed I see posts from fellow writers chronicling their feelings of worthlessness, distress, and crushing self-doubt in regards to their writing and by extension themselves. As writers we place a lot of value in the success of our words, and whether we are published or not, those words mean the world to us. But the thing that has been bothering me lately is the sheer…

Experiments in Modular Blogging- an attempt to show a lifetime through hidden moments

You’re probably thinking, “What the hell is modular blogging?” The answer is, I have no idea. I first came across modular writing through authors like Eula Biss in The Balloonist and Eileen Meyers Cool For You through my English studies at Ball State, and for a while I’ve wanted to do something along these lines. I loved the way these authors broached difficult and often traumatic topics through…

NaPoWriMo 2018- An End Poem

I jotted this down in my notebook yesterday as a final poem for National Poetry Writing Month, but didn’t get a chance to post it till now. Hope everyone you engaged in NaPoWriMo 2018 had a good time writing and/or reading some spontaneous, completely unedited poetry. 🙂

Inspired by Smashing Pumpkins “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning”

What really is an end if not a beginning, or

else…

NaPoWriMo 2018- Aurorna- A Fictional/ Fantasy Poem

I often use poetry as a creative exercise to develop more in depth characters within my fictional and fantasy worlds. Sometimes this poetry makes it into the story itself, sometimes it reflects narratives I will write later, or have already written, but most often it just serves to help me understand my character better, the way they think, and the emotions they feel at key moments. This one was…

NaPoWriMo 2018- An Earth Day Poem

A robin perches on the murky evergreen bushes of the neighbor’s house

Gazing out upon the sun dappled lawn before it

Dandelions sprout from the grass in bright cadmium yellow bursts

Flashing like warning colors on a buzzing bee

Harmless to most, though many still fear their sting

As if a sunny patch of yellow somehow mars their lawn

As if a bit of color amidst a sea of sameness were somehow…

NaPoWriMo 2018- Irony in Idioms

Haven’t posted anything for a while for NoPoWriMo (mostly been writing poems for a class project which I can’t post here). So, I decided to do a quick poetry exercise. These little shorts were made by taking common idioms and finding an inverse to them or deriving new or ironic meaning from them.

These were my three favorites:

  It is true that money doesn’t

grow on trees

The tree has to die…

NaPoWriMo 2018- Racing Thoughts

It’s 4 am and I can’t sleep again Because my mind just won’t turn off My thoughts are racing Pacing, tracing It grows inside me Slowly replacing The sanity I once knew clatter of noise building within like discordant Dionysian drums Beating my mind into rhythmic Trance of broken cacophonic thrums I lay there and think of every single beat As Hunchback’s Hellfire plays on repeat I drift without…