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simply4franki

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Untitled

1 min read
After almost three years of silence, I am back.
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Why have I been absent from this place? That is the question; the mystery which I am about to ponder here. My thoughts come to you in writing directly from my mind (unless my thoughts are so that they need a quick edit before sharing). This place is my second sanctuary (the first being my own mind, of course), my home away from home. Have I been writing and simply not sharing, you may ask? Yes, a little. I've composed a few songs and written one or two variations of poems, but I must be honest in saying that such is all I have done. How long has it been? Months, I'm certain. More than four, maybe more. Likely. I find that my motivation for composing literature has it's ups and downs, as I'm sure everyone else's does also, but let this not be an excuse. I was neglecting my passion and attempting to place the blame not on myself but on the mystical entity I like to call 'writer's block'. Regardless of whether or not I had perfect verses flowing from my mind at every minute, I still should have put my pen to paper (or my fingers to the keyboard in most cases) and just written. The product may have been short, poorly worded, dull... but at least I wouldn't have gone stretches of time without creating something. I must keep in mind that all creation is beautiful, even each of my own products (whether I find them so or not). 

In my life now, as in everyone's life at some point, negative feelings are present. If you have read my work, you would know that I find most of my inspiration to write from seeing or experiencing negative feelings and situations. As I mentioned above, I did draw escence from my present emotional state and compose a few (maybe five and a half) pieces of writing, though if you take the amount of time I've had since last visiting this place into consideration you begin to notice that the amount of work I've produced is, as my grandmother would say, "piddly-bits". It's not that I don't have anything to write about. It's the fact that for the longest time, the only thing on my mind that I felt could be turned into writing was something that I had already written about. Of course I am aware that I could have written multiple pieces about the same topic but in separate lights, but I had it stuck in my head that the first poem I'd written about said topic was such an amazing creation that all others would fall short before it. I wonder if that is simply another excuse and I have been ignoring the fact that the opinion I've mentioned in the previous sentence is, well, really stupid. It goes back to what I was saying about never ceasing to create art for the sole reason that it may not live up to standards.  

On a related note, it's not as if I don't have an abundance of time on my hands. I work approximately 10 hours per week and the majority of my remaining time is spent unproductively: watching television; surfing the internet; playing little online games like Tetris and Runescape; feeling negatively towards the past; trying to predict the future; doing drugs. Of course I have things in my life that I deem productive such as spending time with those close to me or going for relaxing walks outside, but I believe that I've helped you come to the understanding that I definitely do not spend my time wisely. Henceforth I believe that my reasoning for not visiting my literary sanctuary is as such: I am simply unmotivated (another word for that is "lazy", but doctors and psychologists don't typically use the 'L' word that often). The more I think about it the more annoyed I am with myself. I could have weaved words into art featuring topics such as politics, religion, homelessness. I could have created stanzas filled with the emotions and thoughts I have towards life and afterlife, birth and death, relating to other human beings. Heck, I could have written about animals. There are actually a lot of interesting subtopics that span out from the main topic of animals such as animal testing and abuse, how animals perceive the world, the different opinions on whether or not humans should keep pets, the intelligence of some species... Now that I've started, I could continue on like this for ages. And that's just about animals. It would be sin for me to leave all those topics alone to become neglected information piled into the back of my mind - ideas that I could have written about but did not. I believe I now have a few topics that are begging me to use them as subjects for my next literary pieces. Ah, I can already feel the laziness knocking on the windows of my brain and shouting my name like an overly insistent ex-boyfriend who's actions border on being the actions of (to use my mother's word) a creepazoid. I mean, really, who does that? Well, to answer the rhetorical question, laziness does... The creepy ex-boyfriend example was just a fictitious simile. Honest.

I digress from what I'm trying to get across. I have no excuses this time (I mean to say that none have popped into my head so far). I think another problem of mine is the fact that I enjoy writing about my own personal feelings on situations that I am either currently in, have been in or that I imagine I could be in, yet I never take chances and write about subjects that are out of that comfort zone. Most of my poems are completed in one burst of creativity and I usually don't feel the need for extensive editing of said first draft. I do realize that some people out there likely first choose a topic, create a little outline, write a couple stanzas and then set the work aside to resume and edit at a later time. Does that make either method the better way of writing poetry? Of course not. I simply prefer to let my mind open up and have it piece together a beautiful river of words that I then look upon with pride, about five to thirty minutes later. My point here is that I must begin to drag myself out of the writing comfort zone, choose a topic (such as politics or animals) that I have a lot to say on and then accept with open arms the fact that I will likely need to take some sweet time to transform a rant-like opinion in my head into recognizable (and beautiful) poetry. If I want to expand the list of topics that I have created poetry on, it is necessary for me to take the time to figure out how to artistically phrase not only my thoughts on the self-absorbed subjects that I have written about in the past (you know, I'm talking about the poems that only the heartbroken and those who live lives that are uncannily parallel to mine can truly relate to) but also how to eloquently phrase the mature opinions that I have about worldly matters affecting huge chunks of the population. I do think like that too, you know - all mature and grown-up and stuff. That said, I must keep in mind that beginning a poem and getting stuck in the middle is not cause to discard it altogether, as I have done with a few unfinished ideas in the past. 

I need also remember that in order to create the admirable product that I so look forward to calling my own I must use something that I have already touched on momentarily while referring to alien methods of writing, but that I have only heard about in lore: planning (and the even lesser understood follow-up step, execution, which is crucial for a plan to ever develop). It is necessary for my progress as a literary artist that I cease my habit of limiting myself to writing about things that are right in front of me and begin to create literature that speaks to a more varied audience. 

My mother has told my multiple times while reading my compositions, I need to learn to take the soul of the poem and make it a bit less long and a little more able to fit itself into one page (without making the font smaller, that is). I've always thought that was an uneducated thing to say. If you read classic poetry, you'll know that some poems just can't be fit into one page. Some emotions and thought processes simply cannot be tied down and some stories are meant to be told in detail. When a poet endeavors to express all the points that they believe are needed to turn an idea into a complete piece of literature, it just so happens that on occasion the composition ends up being somewhat longer than a haiku. Sorry, ma. But I am beginning to understand what she means. To truly master the art of poetry I must be able to carefully select only the most important of words and capture the entirety of what I want to express within whatever boundaries I am given. The beauty of skills such as this one are that they can be used for multiple purposes; the art of using a minimal number of words to achieve maximum effect can be put to work in the initial creation stage of concise yet effective poetry, modification of tedious first-draft poems (which, as we know, isn't something I've done often) and in helping you to not say impulsively stupid and potentially offensive things when you're talking aloud to other people. I can easily call to mind times where I have wished that particular poems of mine could be compressed into something a bit less "wordy" and a bit more compact while also retaining the same passion, flow and general information as the original. As I was unable to grant this wish for myself, I simply wrote another poem with a lower word count than the particular poem I'd been looking at because I'm awesome and I have this other thing called talent. But don't get me wrong, now. I still want to be a master of literary expression.

I've read and reread some of my more lengthy poems and I find myself in a position of such attachment to the wording and the poetic flow of every line that even if I had the skill to expertly trim the piece down and refrain from losing meaning, I still could not bear to discard unnecessary words and fuse together the meager remains of separate lines for the purpose of pushing down the word count, or worse, to willingly remove entire parts of the whole. (What is the correct way to proceed after the butchering of a poem that you had once called complete? Do you openly present both of the versions with your other creations or do you tuck away the original so that no one will ever get to lay their eager eyes on the art that you once poured your soul into? Do you rename the piece and begin showing the original and the edit as two separate poems that just so happen to share entire chunks of text? The obvious answer in my book is to let the readers know that the poem they are reading has an original, un-edited copy and to then give them a way to access that original if they wish to.) I realize that I have always felt strongly that the original version of any piece of literature should be kept from tampering with after a specific amount of time has gone by or more importantly after said literature has been shown to anyone as a complete work. Due to this stubborn feeling of mine, I would be jerking you around on a string if I told you that I was preparing myself to haul my metaphorical ax up onto my shoulder, trek into the vulnerable world of my past writings, take a swing and watch as the individual letters tumbled to the ground and disappeared from sight. Not I.










My point of all this? To start writing more often, even if I don't feel creative. My weakness? Knowing how to end this blurb without just cutting it off.
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Foriver.
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{I wrote this on my iPod's notepad in early May (the second, to be precise). There's many reasons that it is only a work in progress, but I believe it can be something better.}

Angel
Oh angel I made you cry
I got lost in the fire
Lost track of time

Angel 
Oh my love dressed in white
You limped to the edge
I laughed by his side

Angel
Love, you never let me fade
I told you to burn
You held on to my flame

Angel
You watched from afar
Won't say the devil made me do it
Won't lie to save my soul

Angel
You heard what I didn't say
As my knife was to your throat
You picked up my weary frame

Angel 
I was merely a ghost when you found me
He's right that anyone else
Would have left me to drown
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Rational

1 min read
Anxiety needs to be rationalized, so either we fix the problem or drop everything that could potentially cause another.
That is how I will rationalize.
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