Werds, dude...

I'm enrolled in a creative writing class. It's pretty introductory, but exactly what I needed, especially after the tumultuous nightmare that was English 300, which had me cursing the name of English from the very words of "Analytical Research Essay Final" in my syllabus.

This class is not only challenging me to write, but to write what I mean, what I feel, and to write with beauty. A classroom puts a strange spin on creativity, because not only are you writing to improve yourself and express yourself to yourself, but to express yourself to others, as well. It's a weird suspension between creativity and responsibility. It's difficult.

Our first assignment was to write a poem with the prompt of "Where I Am From." I wrote this.

Isaac Middleton

Poem Number 1

Creative Writing

August 30, 2012

I Am

I am streets, streets, endless streets

Winding, knotting, tangling.

Dust matted deep into cracks

Of the roads, of the wrinkles, of the faces,

Wearing smiles.

Greeting traders.

I am of a foreign music, of a secret language

That rests precisely at the tip of their mouths.

I am a question, forever.

Unaware, happily so.

At home.

I am tucked-in shirts, short-cut hair, well-trimmed souls.

A gross marriage between the firm hands of Faith

Strangling into submission the sad face of Learning.

A faith misguided, misinterpreted, misused.

Unknowingly, happily so.

I am a sky like a big blue mouth, devouring this desert,

And perhaps the dessert does the same to me,

With mountains like crooked teeth,

Shouting life into me that I might remember their bodies.

For I can never go back.

Unwillingly, happily so.

 (It's about my home in Mexico).

And now in an hour and a half, I will join mah pals in starting up the rehearsal process. The Music Theatre department is putting on a show for both the president of the university and all the wealthy-pocketed donors who have supported Western all these long years. I'm kinda nerves, dude. These people are rich and important and stuff. I still don't know how to tap... Maybe rich people really like roller blading chimpanzees....