if you like my poems let them
walk in the evening, a little behind you

then people will say
"Along this road i saw a princess pass
on her way to meet her lover (it was
toward nightfall) with tall and ignorant servants."
- e.e. cummings
 
 
 
 

I'm Faith. I'm seventeen going on twenty seven going on just plain seven, or at least that's what it feels like. I'm a good kid - I don't smoke or drink or give blow jobs to anyone willing to pay $4 or anything like that - so I rebelled by rejecting most of whhat my parents hold dear - Republicanism and Christianity. I think deep down, they really are happy that I'm rebelling in this manner, rather than the traditional way of getting drunk and pregnant.  Over the course of that process of  "rebellion", and subsequent new value finding, I guess I learned how to put certain feelings away. Far away. Where I wouldn't write about them, or couldn't. Ever hear "Logical Song" off of the Magnolia soundtrack? yeah, that's what happened to me. A lot of times I think, what's the point in writing about it, someone else already did, and they did a damn good job, so why bother, or, it's just a bunch of teenage girl crap anyway, totally and completely devoid of talent, and lord knows we have enough stupid teenage girls running around writing tons of stupid teenage girl poetry, at least i can do my part by not becoming a current in that river, or, i'm just lazy, and don't feel like staying up the extra half hour to write whatever it is down, and work on it, and turn it into something. So at times this page really feels like a big lie. So then why don't I take this page down? Because even if I am bad at poetry, no matter how many times I decide, "alright, no more poetry for me", it keeps coming back. I know I'm not Sylvia Plath, or Emily Dickinson, or Edna St. Vincent Millay, but I guess I can still make at least some people happy by just being Faith. I still have this page up, even when it feels stupid, so I can remember. It's still here because I'm going through this amazing process of actually sort of becoming a semi adult like responsible person, and I'm trying to do that without shutting off my feelings this time. So even if these poems don't have any real literary value, they have value to me in that they're a record of a journey, "a bottle with the battle records tear stained from the war". I don't think they'll make me famous, but if you think about it, long and hard, that doesn't really matter.

I guess that's it.
 
I hope I haven't been too smarmy.
 
 

 
Poetry
Pablo Neruda

And it was that age... Poetry arrived
In search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
It came from, from winter or a river
I don't know how or when
No, they were not voices they were not
Words, nor silence
But from a street I was summoned from the branches of the night
Abruptly from the others
Among violent fires
Or returning alone
There I was without a face
And it touched me

I did not know what to say; my mouth
Had no way
With names
My eyes were blind
And something started in my soul
Fever or forgotten wings
And i made my own way
Deciphering
That fire
And I wrote that first faint line
Faint without substance, pure
nonsense
Pure wisdom