The Diary of a Poet

Do you keep a journal or a diary? Through the years, I tried to keep my thoughts together by writing them down in one of these books. I never succeeded and I always wondered why? After all, I like to write, I like to write down how I feel and my thoughts of why I do feel the way I feel. To me, it’s self-therapy, but more than that, it’s something I enjoy doing.

However, writing in a diary or journal has been the hardest thing for me. I must have purchased ten journals through the years with the best intent to sit down every night and pretend like I was Laura Ingalls Wilder from the Little House on the Prairie books and write my story, not the one that played Laura Ingalls Wilder, of course, but the one who wrote the books about her own life. After all, those were her journals put into words and made into a story, and I admired that.

Even so, my best efforts fizzled out after a month or two, and I placed them in a drawer, then would find them later and hate what I had written in them anyway. They were always sorrowful, not in a poetic way, but in a plain boring and sad way. In the garbage or in the fire, they would go, and I would sit and think to myself about my miserable life and how it, at no time, would ever make an interesting memoir, it was just not fantastic enough.

I still enjoyed writing through the years, never finding much success at it, but keeping it as a hobby. I had children and other jobs through the years that would take it away for long periods of time, but I would gravitate back to it eventually;taking writing courses and trying to freelance. I attempted to publish in a few magazines as well, and although the rejection letters were surprisingly not heartbreaking enough to make me give up, they were quite the opposite. They were very helpful and encouraging.

Time got in the way very often, and around Christmas time 2014, I ran across an ad for a poetry contest that the website Poetry Nation put on every year. I went there, discovered it wasn’t too late to enter, and I, without knowing how to begin a poem, started writing. I found this actually really easy, and I felt energized with the process.

I entered the poem, and even though I did not win, or as of yet, I have heard nothing of the winners, they did send me a letter stating I was one of the semi finalists, and with that, my poem will be published with about 300 other poems in a book Poetry Nation will put out through Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It’s called “Beyond the Sea,” and as I don’t know when it will be available yet, I can’t wait until it is.

This poem I came up with today, had me thinking of all those times I tried so hard to write in a journal, and finally I realized that I needed a poet's view to make my life interesting. Now that I have found a great place like Hubpages to share my work with others who share my interest, I could not be happier. I hope you like my latest poem.

This is my way of letting you know without letting you know, speaking

words that will be left unspoken.

This is my way of feeling pain without showing the tears on my

face, crying in silence in my own reverie.

I swallow hard, fighting every inch of the night and wonder

when I wake, will I be able to participate.

The days are long; it makes me sigh, to think about the days

I have ahead and the days I leave behind.

I’m tired at the very least, but I must continue to make sense,

or I’ll no doubt just give in.

The fight has been hard, yet I hate to complain I have no right

to feel this sad way.

I struggle with guilt from keeping my secret and hope

God forgives me for my seemingly ungrateful features.

It is a misunderstanding, for I am quite grateful indeed;

it's just sometimes I find it hard to breathe in a world full

of racism and war.

My friend depression likes knocking on my door.

If I could be happy at all times, and be able to understand this new

human nature that has changed from back when I was a child,

I would do so in a heartbeat. However, that’s not the reality

of the world we've created

I keep thinking to myself, there’s got to be a way to

fit into this life, without falling deep into the chaos of a hateful

time.

Blossoming from a desert of dried-out vision, I’ve finally made a very positive

decision.

I’ll keep my visions planted toward the sky, that way I know I will and can

stay alive.

All photos found through wikimedia commons and flickr through the Google advance search site.

All videos courtesy of YouTube.