Getting Started...
Hello all, I have started this blog as a way to share my poetry, essays, short stories and just random thoughts! I hope that I don't bore you into a stupor :) I will try to update as often as possible but life has a way of being hectic at times. A little background on me...
1) I am a Poet. I have been writing forever and finally began taking myself seriously in 2009 when I began going religiously to open mic nights and poetry slams. 2) I have been on my city's poetry slam team for the 2010 season... great experience! 3) I would love to write novels for young adults...as soon as I find a cure for my short attention span. 4) I also compose music and would love to one day become good enough to score films!
So that was a little bit about me, I will share more information about myself in the coming posts. I want to welcome readers to comment freely on any poem or writing I post whether you like it or not. I hope to inspire or at least motivate whoever comes across this blog. I thank you for paying attention to me! :)
The first poem I am going to share is a poem about Bullycide. This is a very serious topic that is sadly taking the lives of so many young adults and teenagers. At times we may lose sight of the fact that words are dangerous if used the wrong way, hopefully this poem will help everyone to remember to pay attention to the children, kids just being kids can be detrimental to fragile self esteems....
Bullycide is a real word
I have the words slut, freak and ugly tatoo'd to the skin of my inner thighs, in a language that only I can decipher. Really, it's just a series of lines-slashed and jagged some long some short.
If I'm in a good mood I like to think myself an artist but normally I just think myself a coward for not standing up to the people who tell me everyday how much they hate me just for being alive.
The mirror in the bathroom is shattered. Shards of glass littered the floor last month after I got angry at the red-eyed girl looking back at me, I hate when she looks so weak, so I used a piece of that girls broken image to give myself a new tatoo.
My locker at school is a duller shade of blue than the others surrounding it. That's because nine weeks ago the janitor had to scrub it twelve times to get the red words whore, skank and lesbo to be visible only when standing directly in front of it. A reminder of who they think I am every time I have to switch books for the next class...three new tattoos appeared that night on the inside of my left arm.
One year ago I got my first tatoo... after a group of girls from gym class cornered me in the shower, poking and pinching at my bare flesh gawking and giggling. she's so disgusting, she'll never have a boyfriend, how could anyone love that? I felt about as big as a bread crumb after that, unable to look anyone in the eye knowing how they all must feel about me.
It was accidental how it all started really. I was home alone and I began to explode, throwing things and calling those girls what I couldn't day to their faces when I got a paper cut. From a vicious letter tucked into my notebook while I answered question number four on the board that day. At first it hurt so bad I forgot to be mad, I just felt the throbbing of pain. Then it began to feel good, I began to feel good...my first tatoo was the word disgusting.
My teachers often tell me I overreact. Write on progress reports that I am introverted and extremely sensitive. They don't know how tough I have to be to put up with the daily berating, to live with it.
I heard on the news about a girl, Phoebe Prince fifteen years old, bullied everyday like I am. She was found by her little sister hanging in a stairwell.
Read online about Carl Walker-Hoover and Jaheem Herrera both eleven years old tormented relentlessly, both found by their mothers hanged in their homes at dinner time.
Ty Smalley, a sixth grader, shot himself after being sent home from a fight with a kid who degraded him continuously.
After being harassed mercilessly and even publicly told by a classmate "why don't you go home and shoot yourself. no one will miss you" seventeen year old Eric Mohat killed himself.
Tyler Clementi college freshman jumped off the george washington bridge. Seth Walsh sixteen shot himself. Asher Brown thirteen hanged himself.
Some days I wonder if I'm next. Will I make myself a headline on the evening news to teach them all the ultimate lesson that words do hurt worse than sticks and stones, in fact words hurt worse than razors against soft flesh, worse than bullets piercing and telephone cords turned nooses around necks.
Thing is, I don't think it would even matter to them, I'd just be giving them what they want. Yet, like Phoebe and Tyler and every other bullied kid like us out there, no one's given me a reason not too yet...
Thank you for reading, please come back to visit me soon!