An abstract poem
I have no back story on this poem other than the obvious fact that I wrote it ten years ago today. Let’s see what I devised:
This is a bit more abstract than my other high school poetry
Transcript:
Antithetical,
Monkey thought.
Thetical,
Jerk thought.
The greedy discussion
Blood red checks to get in
Stained with pain,
Written in vain
Thoughtful thinking
Never ceasing
Until it do.
I can’t say much about this poem other than “until it do” is a blatant misuse of correct grammar. Some of my classmates in certain high school classes didn’t talk very goodly, so I’m sure they inspired that line. Other than that, I don’t have much to say about this. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
A really good poem with sexual undertones
There’s a bunch of crap on this page that you can probably ignore, followed by a poem that I actually kind of like a lot. More specifically, the top part of the page is probably some sort of word association, as I wrote about memories like “Forest City Invitational, senior year” (a cross country meet I ran) and “Picking up Dorothy and spinning her around” (I played the Scarecrow in “The Wiz”), and the middle part of the page looks like some disjointed stream-of-consciousness-type writing.
I’m only going to transcribe the poem that follows those thoughts, however, because frankly, I think it’s actually worth reading:
Transcript:
Rest
Relaxation
Muscles loosened
Body stopped
Staring at the closet, the closet staring back at me
One last movement – cuddling
One last thought – sex
One last sigh –
Finally.
It has pretty strong implications, but it’s also open to interpretation. You could even say that it’s… poetic. Maybe my creative writing teacher got to me after all. I just hope this poem was as good for you as it was for me (sorry, I couldn’t resist).
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
Writing exercise: writing a poem using similes
We did a fun little writing exercise in class on February 4, in which we completed some sentences to create similes. I feel like I wrote some pretty cool similes! But then, we were supposed to use them as an inspiration for a poem. Let’s see what I accomplished:
This poem uses a lot of similes! Which goes to show that a poem that uses a lot of similes… is still terrible, if it’s an awful poem.
Transcript:
Pouring coffee down his throat
As if he hadn’t had a drink since last night,
The honor walked down the plank
Towards the ring
Towards his title shot
For the WWE Undisputed Championship
The puffy clouds in his glass of wine
—Last night—
Had been like the jagged clouds in his opponent’s bag of cocaine
The clouds rolling like dice out of a cup
Like his mother’s fist did to his face last night
And as the honor saw the hydrochloric acid at ringside
He knew it could solve his greatest problem:
Zombies.
A few things:
- This is terrible… except for the last line.
- I don’t know what an “honor” is, in this context. Obviously I know what honor is, but my use of the word here baffles me. It’s not capitalized, so it’s not a judge… any ideas?
- At least it’s coherent?
This just goes to show that there’s more to writing than just using literary devices. I think I probably took the assignment too literally, but I came up with something that at least told a coherent story, so… it could’ve been worse? Either way, let’s hope it doesn’t get much worse.
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” project, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
Uh oh… a serious poem?
Well, this is going to be challenging.
In a culture over-saturated with irony, it’s hard to say something serious and leave yourself vulnerable to criticism, judgment, or even simple interpretation. That’s why I’m at least a bit reluctant to post this poem, because although I did indeed write it ten years ago, it’s strikingly devoid of the irreverence typical of the rest of my work. Was my teacher somehow successful in motivating me to actually attempt a serious poem?
Fortunately, the fact that I wrote this poem ten years ago is akin to a famous actor posting a video of the commercial he did for a local insurance company in Kansas when he was 16, so let’s face it: I can’t be too sensitive about any feedback I receive from anyone. So without further ado, let’s see if I was able to muster any poetic talent after my first couple weeks of a creative writing class (note that my actual poem attempt appears at the bottom half of the page):
The top half is either a rough draft, or random notes… there’s really no way to tell. Either way, feel free to ignore it!
Transcript:
Darkness, stars, shattered dreams
Golden Idol among blindfolded denial
Cry of the Lifestream
Bloodshed of war
Fall of the epic hero
Hardcore
Body falling endlessly
Fallable, Falling, Failing
Hopeless destruction
Ultimate end
Hopeless failure
Goodbye to a friend.
A few things:
- “Lifestream” is a Final Fantasy VII reference, and knowing me, I used “Hardcore” in the context of professional wrestling. So I guess I did go a LITTLE “inside” with this poem.
- I feel like this poem would be awesome at a beat poetry open mic, probably because it doesn’t have an obnoxiously generic rhyming scheme.
- Is this perhaps some kind of analogy for the life of a video game character?
You know what’s weird? I wanted to write some commentary on the poem, so I scrolled up to read it. And seeing it written on a blank white screen in sans serif, Italicized font… well, it made it un-readable to me. Am I totally crazy or what? But seriously, I feel like I can only read this in its original hand-written form, or I’m not able to really “get into it.”
Anyway, what do you think? Is this any “good” or is it just mindless high school drivel? I took the creative writing class to learn how to be more poetic (whatever that means), but I think that at the conclusion of the class, I never really learned whether I was any good at it or if I just got better at feeling like I knew what I was doing. Does that even make sense? Probably not. But I’m going with it anyway.
Clearly, I need to practice writing some more… good thing I’ve got this web site! Thanks for joining me for the ride. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts, and please share my project with anyone you think may be interested. More posts to come soon!
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
Free-flowing thoughts of a high schooler
And now for something completely different!
Apparently, we listened to music in class while writing down a free-flowing stream of thought. I don’t remember what music was playing, but that kind of makes this page of notes more awesome; in fact, go ahead and try to imagine what kind of music I was hearing at the time I wrote this: I’d love to hear your theories!
Actually, I’m very interested in whether you find this interesting at all. When you read the lucid thoughts of a teenager below, are you able to paint yourself a picture of anything? Does it outline any sort of character for you? Or is it all just completely nonsensical?
I understand most of what is below on some level, whether because I’m familiar with the cultural references I make, or because some of it just makes sense on its own (i.e. the part about Irish girls). But do you? Please send me a message or let me know in the comments how you respond to this – I’m quite curious!
In the mean time, I hope you enjoy the free-flowing thoughts of a 17-year-old high school student in a creative writing class:
The free-flowing thought of a 17-year-old. What I wouldn’t give to know what music was playing during this writing exercise…
Transcript:
Suikoden
Captain, making fun of Suikoden
Final Fantasy 6 opera
Celes, Setzer, Gau, Terra,
Locke Edgar, Strago, Relm
Strago / Relm / Shadow connection?
Why is the tape so quiet then
so loud? Crappy player?
Is it the school’s or the teacher’s?
Want to practice with
All-City Musical Orchestra
What the hell is this from?
It’s not very good
Almost sounds Irish, only bad
Brynn’s Irish
I LIKE Irish girls
Now it REALLY sounds Irish
I want to marry an Irish girl – probably a
redhead
I hate Captain’s watch
Why did that just cut off?
What the hell (once again)
It WAS like Ty Cobb
This is like Linkin’ Park
Nice saxophone, nice beat
Cool band, I like it
I need to ask what this is
Who was that woman
singing?
I bet she wasn’t Irish
This sounds like something
off of a soundtrack
Specifically, Lord of the Rings
Gosh that movie sucked
War, blood, violence
I never think the IMAGE
of blood, I usually picture
grey swords clanging together.
This is from the 20’s
I wish I was in love
I kind of AM in love, but in
an ambivalent, restrained
kind of way
I knew that would end
right there
This HARDCORE sounds
like Final Fantasy
That one song… either “We
Three Kings of Orient Are” or
“Tuxedo Kamen Piano Suite”
from Sailor Moon
Really sounds like 3 kings
Too bad that had to end
Secret of Mana time
Very nice… wish I was more
proficient at the piano
It stopped
“Creative juices” made me
think of sex right away
The only things I’ll point out are that “Captain” is the name of my best friend, who took the class with me, and Brynn is the name of another close [always platonic] friend who sat next to me in that class. Their names will come up several times in the future, I’m sure, so you may as well be aware of their existence now.
Please let me know whether this is all completely meaningless to you, or if disjointed personal writing like this sparks something in your imagination! I feel that so many things online today are cut-and-dry, spelled out for you, and not really open to interpretation. I want to know if I’m adding something deeper, or if I’m just adding nonsense to the noise. And please feel free to share with friends if you think any of them would like to add their thoughts!
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
Futuristic poem of the future
My first poem of my creative writing class! This should be exciting. Let’s see what I came up with ten years ago today:
Futuristic poem is futuristic
Transcript:
Watching the grey cat crap,
I pick you up and jump over it,
Taking you across the creek to enjoy
The liquid in the plastic cup awaiting us
In the futuristic house
In the futuristic world
In our futuristic lives
…..of the future.
A few things:
- What. The hell. Is this.
- I legitimately never drank alcohol in high school, so I’m assuming the plastic cup contains Mountain Dew. In fact, I am positive this absolutely has to be the case.
- This “poem” is the kind of thing that makes me wonder where thoughts come from. And somehow, I don’t even care that I ended that sentence with a preposition.
I don’t have any record of what assignment spawned this obviously brilliant poem, so I won’t be writing a “modern-day version” of the assignment this time. Let’s hope things stay this ridiculous in the future!
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
My 10-Year Idea Reunion
The time is nigh.
It’s like my own personal Bible… of IDEAS
I took a creative writing class during my last semester of high school in 2003, and I still have the “idea notebook” I created while enrolled in that class. Our first day of class was January 21, 2003. Guess what day is coming up soon?
That’s right: January 21, 2013.
Over the next several months, I will be reproducing the contents of my “idea notebook” in their ENTIRETY on this site. All of my poems, stories, notes, and more will be here…exactly 10 years after I wrote them.
I want to be clear up-front that the humor contained in these posts will not come from the sheer awfulness of any of it. Quite the contrary: I consider myself to be a pretty funny teenager, and from what I’ve seen flipping through the pages of my tome of brilliance, I was a pretty funny teenager 10 years ago, too. I didn’t – and still don’t – take myself too seriously, so everything you read will have more than a slight dose of irreverence.
And I won’t just be regurgitating old content; after all, where’s the challenge in that? Instead, in addition to writing commentary on my old treasures, I will also re-do some of my old assignments and compare them to what I wrote 10 years ago. We’ll all find out together how much I’ve changed in the last decade.
Stay tuned. This is going to be fun.
HAIKU X 12 (14?)
I found a sheet of paper simply titled HAIKU X 12, which contained – you guessed it – 12 Haikus, mostly about my friends. There are also two at the bottom of the page that my friend Captain wrote, which are sadly the closest thing to a payoff you’re going to get in this post. If I had to guess, I would say that I wrote these in either 1999 or 2000 (8th or 9th grade).
I should also note that there was one Haiku that had been scribbled out into oblivion. I have no idea what it said.
Was I trying to write 12 or 14? #badhandwriting
Mute Mask is stupid
Karl please shut up right now
That picture is dumb
I hate [NAME REDACTED]
He is ugly and stupid
I want to kill him
My name is Cody
I run The Posse’s Web Page
Please call me The Game
Brad is athletic
He likes wrestling like me
We call him The Rock
Logan likes Star Wars
He is good with computers
He has a Dreamcast
Guy is the smallest
He is sugar-high and fast
He hangs out with Luke
Ron likes Gundam Wing
He always talks about it
He likes Space Ghost too
Chrissy is so loud
I could hit her with a rock
She laughs all the time
[[MYSTERIOUS DELETED HAIKU]]
Jon is really strong
He complains about Cody
Smash Brothers is ****
Nima hates [NAME REDACTED]
He wants to rip his arms off
I also want to
Jon likes RPG’s [sic]
He’s good at multiplayer
He’s cheap with Kirby
Jon’s Haikus at the bottom:
Cody’s poems are dumb
Yet are somewhat accurate
Hamburgers fly high
Cody sucks with nukes
He loses Starcraft a lot
Terrans are Jobbers
Cody Gough (dot com) 