First Love

Everyone has that one person in their lives. Everyone has a first love. It's something we all live and deal with. The fact of the matter is this. That person, however you feel about them, they've changed you in more ways than one. They taught you something. Something that cannot so easily be forgotten. For me, that something was dealing with traumatic stress and disappointment all at once. You could say, it was an experience to say the least.  Looking back now though, I'm not even the same person that I was. Maybe that's a good thing. Why be the same person your whole life? Why would you want to not change and become stagnant? I guess that's the beauty of having a first love. At that time, you experience plenty of firsts. Your first kiss, your first date, and even your first sexual experience. It's kind of beautiful when you think about it really. Although most first loves may just become nothing more than a distant memory, we can all take something from each of our experiences.

My inspiration for writing this poem obviously stemmed from my experiences with my first love however, I found it quite difficult to try and describe how important one's first love truly is. I thought for a while and I finally came to the conclusion that having a first love is like a beautiful tragedy. It's pretty much destined to fail but those memories that you made with that person will stick with you forever. You could be 85 years old and you could still think back to that time when you looked into your crushes eyes for the very first time, put your hands on her waist, and kissed her oh so passionately. In that moment, you felt complete. There's no better feeling than the feeling of being wanted by another. It's truly something that I will never forget.

As far as actually writing this poem, it literally took me maybe ten minutes at most. I actually wrote this on the treadmill at the gym because why the hell not right? No, but seriously it really made the time fly by fast. You all should try it sometime. It's quite the stress reliever. Anyways, this poem was dedicated to my first love whose name I will not mention because, I don't want any of you to think I'm shady. Well, I know the anticipation has been getting to you so without any further of due, here is this weeks poem.

                                        “First Love”

Once in your life,
You come across someone,
Someone that will change your life,
Someone who’ll you’ll come to adore,
And someone you might hate,
But in the end, 
They’ll always be your first love, 
You could move away, 
Change your phone number, 
You could even change your name,
But one thing will remain the same,
That person,
However you may feel about them, 
They've made their mark, 
They were your first kiss, 
They were your first regret, 
They were your first love.

A Reluctant Hero

One thing people usually don't realize about me is, that I'm secretly a huge nerd. However, I'm not your typical kind of nerd. I'm a superhero kind of nerd. As far as choosing a side in the superhero universe goes, I've always been Batman's number one fan. I guess, you could say I'm a DC fan boy but I tend to think of myself as being a fan of both DC and Marvel. They both have some pretty stellar characters. I mean, in DC you have Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Cyborg, and Green Arrow. Then you have Marvel who has Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk, Thor, Wolverine, Spiderman, and Deadpool. Both universes have some stellar characters. There's no denying that.

Like I said before though, Batman has always been my favorite superhero because, he's not really super if you will. He has no powers. He's just awesome because, he can hang with all of the most powerful superheros in the universe without even having a single power. To me, that just screams clutch. For all of those who aren't familiar with the word clutch, it means cool. Get with the times people. As the great Bob Dylan once said, "Oh the times, they are a changin". 

My inspiration for writing this weeks poem stems from Batman being my favorite superhero. It's actually a poem I've had in my mind for quite some time. I've just never really had the nerve to put it down on pen and paper until now. Well, in this case, typing words and having them appear onto my laptop screen. I spent a good hour or so trying to figure out how on earth I was going to start the poem. It was actually a lot more difficult than I originally thought it was going to be. However, once all was said and done, I thought it was almost perfect. I just needed an awesome title. I thought for a while and I finally came to the conclusion that I would title this poem "A Reluctant Hero" because, that's exactly what Batman is. He doesn't have to save the city, he just feels the need to. Well, I think I'm almost at 400 words now, so here's my poem! Hold onto your seats or whatever you're sitting on. 

                  
                  “A Reluctant Hero”

            A hero can be anyone,            

There’s something really satisfying about that,

            A reluctant hero,

            Someone who knows that time is limited,

            Someone who knows that one day,

They’ll forever have to hang up their mask,

Someone who knows that one day;

They won’t be able to protect the ones they've tried so hard to keep safe,

            So they’ll fade into obscurity,

            Waiting,

Waiting to answer the call once more,

            To rise to the occasion,

            To fight injustice,

            To silence the doubters,

            To protect the innocent once more,

            One day,

One day.

Losing Hope

The new poem that I have written over the course of the last week is one that I do in fact take great pride in. I entitled the poem "Losing Hope" and here's why. Over the course of the past week, I've been doing quite a bit of thinking. All that I've been able to think of are the horrid events happening in  Ferguson and the terrorist group known as Isis beheading a U.S. journalist. I myself, have found these two events to be some of the worst black eyes that America has had to deal with in quite some time. The only thing that I can even recall being worse than these two events is the horrific nightmare that was the September eleventh attacks on the The World Trade Center. However, like I said before, the two main contributing factors in writing this were the events currently happening in Ferguson and the terrorist group Isis and that is primarily what I'm going to stick to here.

Realizing that I had plenty to write about here, I immediately thought that this poem would be one of the easier things to write about. What's funny is that I could have never been more wrong. Knowing that I needed to make sure the poem was detailed and written well enough, I was clearly a bit nervous in making it absolutely perfect. For hours, I stared at a blank screen wondering how long my stroke of genius would take to come into effect. Then finally it hit me. As soon as I started writing, I knew that this was going to be one of my better writings as a whole. Not only was the title pretty strong, but I also had plenty of material to work with.

Once I was finished, I thought to myself, "Man, I'm good". I then made myself a cup of coffee, worked on about five years of homework, and called it a day. However, once I realized that I forgot to actually write my blog post for the week, I quickly decided to get a quick start on it before class. I guess, I was just so focused on writing about my poem that I actually forgot to write about the blog post itself. It's a good thing I have a semi good memory or I would have been in quite the predicament. Since I'm such a nice guy, I've also decided to include the actual poem I wrote as well, enjoy.

                              “Losing Hope”

I used to believe in people,

I used to believe that deep down everyone had some good inside of them,

I used to believe that there was hope,

I thought maybe one day,

We could all be at peace,

Sadly,

I was terribly wrong,

I've come to the realization that some people,

Just want to watch the world burn,

There will always be conflict,

It doesn't matter what we do,

To be honest,

I lost faith in humanity a long time ago,

You can’t truly understand the horrors of the human society until you've witnessed it for yourself,

Maybe I’m losing hope,

Maybe I’m holding onto something that just isn't a possibility anymore,

One day,

Maybe you’ll understand,

When the world is ashes & you find yourself with no one to blame but all of us,

I hope you’re as content with the idea as I am.

The Beginning of Something Great

I chose to write about a new poem that I've written each week because, in recent years it has actually become one of my favorite things to do in my spare time. Not that I want to sound any less macho but I tend to think of writing poetry as an in depth emotional expression of one's inner self. A guy like me  does need some kind of hobby besides being exceptionally handsome, am I right? As far as how I got started writing poetry, it's kind of a funny story. I was in my senior year of high school and if I remember correctly it was also my first semester of high school that year. I had gone down to the first floor to talk to my school counselor in order to make sure I was registered early for some super easy classes. What I didn't expect was that one of the gym classes I was registered for was actually full. I had two classes to choose from after that. I had to choose from either Spanish or Creative writing. I'm not sure if you've ever tried to learn how to speak a foreign language but I wasn't about to spend my last year of high school trying to learn a new language that I honestly had no intention on really learning. That's when I made the decision to go ahead and give the whole Creative writing class a shot. How hard could it really be? 

My teacher's name was Mr. Vincent and I had never actually met him in person before. All I really knew of him was that he was the voice of Elmer Engel Stadium. Basically, he was the announcer of the football games at Bay City Central High School. When I first met him, I imagined him being a bit taller considering his god like voice but he was only about 5'7'' and weighed about 180 lbs. I actually mentioned this to him and he replied with "That's what everybody says when they first meet me!" Finally, it came time for Mr. Vincent to give us our first project of the semester. I was expecting to write a short story or something easy. As soon as he said the word poetry, I instantly thought "How macho". He instructed us that we had to write twelve poems that were up close and personal. I actually dreaded the assignment because, I had no idea how I would even start it. After hours of just starring at a blank screen something just clicked. I finally let my inner wall of masculinity down and proceeded to write about my past experiences. I probably didn't realize it at the time but that's the moment when poetry became a part of my life.