My Prison

Written September 7, 2001. My apologies to Pleasant Hill Adventist Academy: I really grew to love the school in later years, and this is not a reflection on the school itself, but on how much time I spent there in sixth grade.

There are no bars of sturdy iron,
But thick glass and shades.
There is no need of ball and chain,
But piles of unsorted files.
There are no doors of heavy metal,
But wood and glass, you see;
My rations are not meager bread,
But pizza, hay stacks, and more.
There are no jailers, grim or else,
But teachers and parents.
I am not told to push an oar,
Or break up rocks,
Or prune trees,
But file and grade papers,
From 8 AM to 10 at night.
I cannot leave this place.
This classroom is my only world,
I know no world than school.
I see my friends go home and play,
But I stay here.
I see my friends go to summer camp,
But I stay here.
An eternity may pass,
In which time they will prosper,
But I will stay here.
School I will take on.
For I will be a teacher (most likely)
Lacking any song.

This is a rude insult to the beautiful art of teaching, which I would consider an honor to join someday. And as for that school in which I once felt trapped--how dearly I wish I could call it my home again. So writes an exile of a city, Pleasant Hill, which I love, where I no longer feel welcome. My new poems, now that I have been to summer camp, joined a profession other than teaching, and seen the world, may mourn instead the loss of the only place where I have felt the label "home" applied.

Running

Written September 7, 2001:

The wind whipping through my hair,
The spirit of quick movement,
The feet that pound upon the ground--
The state of pure enjoyment.

July 27, 2001

If there's no title for the poems I find in these journals (and many of them are without title), their dates suffice. This poem is particularly rough in its style, but describes very real circumstances, for which reason names are blocked out. If you have any familiarity with me from that time, though, you probably know exactly who they describe:

Many moths ago,
Before we were friends
I thought of you in horror
As a monster to no ends.

So I mocked and gossiped
Behind your back
The horrible things I said!
For which I should be whipped.

At Camporee I then found out
The struggles and the pain
The pain you faced every day,
The pain that made us friends.

When I became ambassador
Between the last two tables,
I tired of the Boy Band talk,
The endless talk of media.

When you told me of
Your love for B________.
I already knew, you see.
J_____ had already told me.

In procession are the events
In which I led you
Down the trail of mockery;
The picture, play, and story.

The picture, as you might have imagined
Was not requested of me
I offered and drew it myself
And then J_____ was pleased with me.

Later I sought to draw more
More pictures of your romance
But then I felt the spirit of guilt
And threw them in the trash.

Later, even than that
I wanted to communicate the story,
So I picked up pen and paper and the words began to flow
Putting down what I perceived for you alone to know.

But yet again I got caught up
In fictitious acts of heroism
Then the play I began to write
Just made it worse for you.

After all the written pranks
I turned to my computer;
It supplied greeting cards
And sonnets of amour.

So you see that I am not, indeed,
One worthy to be your friend.
Instead I should be punished,
Tortured to no end.

Yet still you show your mercy
And remain as my companion.
Which leaves me one question:
Why? Why? Why?

Incidentally, that "Why?" eventually became my redemption. The struggle with guilt described in this poem, and the friend to whom it was addressed, taught me the true love of Christ in a way that was more than a word to me, and it changed my life forever.

THE END

This poem inaugurates my quest to write down the scattered lines of poetry that exist from my 43 journals that I have written over the last 14 years. This first one, THE END, is written on the back page of what I like to think of as the Prequel Journal, which I started to write when I was only seven or eight, and still have not finished. It still has many blank pages, which I am filling by writing an entry every time I finish reading the whole canon of journals.

It's the end of my book,
but not my story.
The end of mere words,
but not my story.
Even these are mere lines,
In poetry; only a rhyme.
A finished book,
but not a finished story.
Like a tree that sprung up,
but without branches.
No, this is not my whole life,
but just a small portion.
Not until I'm gone
will the real story begin.