| Always Alone
| Written in 1996, this poem is about a girl I liked from 7th grade to 11th grade. The first 3 stanzas I always imagine somewhat to the tune of a song from 1995 called Long Gone Day by Mad Season. I saw this girl only one day a week in 8th grade, on Tuesday when I went to her school and was in class with her all day for a special program. I'd always be looking forward to Tuesday, hoping I'd figure out a way to talk to her or she'd talk to me or something, but as the poem says, that didn't really happen so much. I had recently had some dreams where I talked to her at the time and figured if it could work like in the dreams, I'd easily marry the girl.
| | A Confession
| During 9th grade, I sent the girl I liked flowers with a card telling her that I liked her that also had my phone number on it. A dozen roses was probably overkill, but she did call. However, I was sad to find out that she would not be my girlfriend. She told me she already had a boyfriend. This is the first poem I wrote after that call, so I was feeling sad and ineffective. Before she told me she had a boyfriend, she said she had "a confession" to make, so that's where the name comes from. This poem was just vague enough to apply to various situations though.
| | Glad to be Sad
| I was still sad about what happened with this girl I liked. I wasn't the type to give up, so even though she told me she had a boyfriend, I asked if we could be friends. Obviously swayed by my ridiculous amount of flowers, she said for me to call her "any time" I wanted. After that, I called her weekly. The mention of self-esteem was because I thought maybe things would go better if I could project more confidence when I talked to her on the phone. The part about 8th grade being over was because I also thought that I made a mistake by waiting as long as I did to let her know I liked her. So I was pretty bummed, but I had the high hopes mentioned in the poem because I hoped maybe she would still date me if she broke up with her boyfriend. The name of the poem is basically saying that I preferred to be sad than give up pursuing this girl. I wrote this in 1997.
| | 4:45 pm
| I was always nervous about calling the girl I liked, so to keep me from wimping out, I'd always do it at exactly 4:45 pm. I spent a lot of time listening to a sappy album by Counting Crows at that time called Recovering the Satellites, so that gave me the idea to say "my world revolved around her" by calling myself her satellite. I mention dialing a 2 because the last number in her phone number was a 2. Before I sent the flowers, I had dialed the first 6 numbers and hung up so many times, but once I dialed the 2, I had committed to the phone call. I felt like I didn't want to freak her out by coming on too strong, so that's why I say I had to keep it mild. My full force was behind a locked door because she already had a boyfriend. The stanza about suffering for her repeats the theme from Glad to be Sad about preferring continued failure over giving up. Then the part about making other people sad was because some friends had commented that hearing me talk about this girl was depressing them.
| | Wilted Roses
| The flowers I sent to this girl had been roses, and I thought of them as wilted since they had been ineffective. Occasionally, we had a good, non-awkward conversation, but that was the exception, so I thought of each phone call as a try and a miss. Then, at the end, again the theme from Glad to be Sad about the preoccupation/obsession with this girl being cruel for me to experience but at the same time something wonderful that I didn't want to give up.
| | One Way Out
| The one way out is suicide, of course. I never truly considered that. It was just the way I sometimes chose to express how devastated I was over continually failing to date this girl. The song I refer to in this poem is an actual goofy little song I wrote.
| | Ultimatum
| The 2nd stanza and half of the 3rd are based on Proverbs 13:12, which says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." I quote scripture again close to the end, implying I had asked God to help me date the girl or else I wanted to die, which is where the "Ultimatum" name comes from. I did ask, but I didn't actually tell God I'd rather die if I couldn't. Poetic license to exaggerate!
| | Seclusion
| More being depressed about the girl. Some elements of his poem also reflect that my family moved when I was 15, which took me farther away from where the girl was, and it was also a move out into the country, so I wasn't able to walk to stores with my friends and such anymore. Thus, I had more time alone to focus on being sad about the girl.
| | Patience
| This is the last poem I wrote about this girl. After calling her regularly for the rest of 9th grade year after I sent the flowers and summer and all of 10th grade year, she finally had enough and told me to quit calling her. I was very upset, but I think I wrote this before that happened and didn't write any more poetry about her afterward.
| | My Best Try
| In 2000 during 12th grade, I got over the first girl and started liking a friend's sister who was nice to me. She was nice to me until she found out I wanted to date her anyway. The dreams that haunted me were the numerous dreams of her actually liking me since I'd have to wake up to discover they weren't real. Since she was my friend's sister though, I got the chance to interact with her and try to win her over. I waited on her, bought her things, and took her places. She was barely grateful. That's why I say in the poem that if I managed to become owner of the whole world, she'd then not be impressed until I owned 2 planets.
| | Last Prayer
| I wrote this poem in 2000, lamenting my friend's sister not liking me. I'm glad to say this was not actually my last prayer though.
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| Go To School
| The name of this poem is a joke. I wrote it while I was in 7th grade, and the implication is that school is comparable to hell. I thought I was pretty clever. This poem is really just nonsense. I threw a bunch of rhyming words together that I thought sounded cool.
| | Senses
| I wrote this poem in the 8th grade. I named it after I wrote it just because it ended up making me think about senses. It is a poem with no intended meaning, just rhyming words.
| | All There Is
| I wrote this poem in the 8th grade. The idea of this poem is being so bored with everything that it borders on depression.
| | Christmas Catastrophe
| I intentionally wrote this poem to be included in the school newspaper, but the teacher didn't want to include it. The beginning and the end are kind of silly, but in the middle, there's actually a little seriousness. It's talking about being persecuted for "religious" speech in public, which has become more common in the US since I wrote this poem back in 1995.
| | Snow
| This is a kind of boring poem about snow and winter that I wrote in the 8th grade so that I could have a poem in the school newspaper. The part about rolling the dice might seem out of place, but I think of it as someone taking their chances skating on ice that could be too thin.
| | Tuesday
| I wrote this poem in the 8th grade on a Tuesday, and that's why it is the name of this poem. I know it's not very creative, but it was hard to give a name to a poem like this. In the first paragraph there, I was just trying to be as random as possible. This is another poem that doesn't have much meaning. It's mostly just rhyming words. I complain about criticism of my poetry at the end, but I don't think I really had a lot of criticism.
| | Worn
| I wrote this poem in Miss Orlett's class in the 8th grade. It was in response to a video. I turned this in as an actual assignment. Miss Orlett didn't get it. I think some noises in the video made me think of the first part. The rest seemed to flow from that.
| | Prisoner
| I wrote this poem on my own time during the 8th grade. This is a lot of random stuff, but there are a few references that have some meaning. I mention "the room" which is a reference to a friend's dream where he was able to be in a place called "the room" which was basically like a holodeck from Star Trek where you can make anything appear. I say I can't push the rock from my tomb, which is a reference to Jesus saying basically that I'm no where near His level. The part about killing oneself with a butterknife is not just a random suicide statement. Rather, it is a reference to a dream I had in 3rd grade where a girl in my class did just that because she was so disgusted by someone putting mustard on a ham sandwich. "You will never be true" is a quote from a song that was popular around that time - "Little Things" by Bush. Of course, the part about going to jail and not passing Go is a reference to Monopoly. I actually wrote the part about going to jail and only then did I think to make it into a Monopoly reference.
| | I Promise
| I wrote this poem at school in the 8th grade (1995) during some downtime. There's some serious stuff mixed with absurdities in it. The general idea is that I was feeling lousy, worn out, and like people expected me to do more. The name of this poem is related to the end.
| | The Christmas Song
| In 10th grade English class, we were to parody "Twas the Night Before Christmas". It's about daring to be ridiculously optimistic and hopeful.
| | The Crazy Cook
| In 12th grade English class, we were to write a poem in sonnet form. In case you don't catch this, I'll bring to your attention that the cook asks for a hand because his arm is broken, and yet he's still trying to fix food for you because he is crazy.
| | Scooby Doo's Epitaph
| I had to write an epitaph for a 12th grade English class assignment. I thought an optimist and pessimist could interpret the end of this poem in very different ways. Pessimist - not scared when you're dead. Optimist - he's in Heaven.
| | An Ode to Silence
| This was written in 12th grade English class. We were to write an ode.
| | Inspiration
| I wrote this poem in 2002 about someone who inspired me to work hard to try to do something important with my life.
| | Bubbles and I Mourn a Squirrel
| I wrote this poem in 2002. Bubbles is a character from the cartoon Powerpuff girls. She is an animal lover and had the ability to talk to squirrels. I actually did run over a squirrel one time and was upset about it for a bit.
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