I´ve been writing for years. It started with journaling which I began extensively in 4th grade and have been at it ever since. Since then I have expanded my writing plethora. My love for creative writing developed throughout high school and grew even more in a college course. Songwriting is another favorite for me. I have written many songs over the past six years or so. Some of the songs come from poems written about events, emotions, or circumstances in my life. I was not much a fan of writing poetry outside of songwriting until my Creative Writing class at GVSU which brought about a love for writing poetry in me and now that is my preference in the writing world. While the creative side of writing is my home, I have plenty of experience writing essays, documents, reports, and articles, etc.
Here are some examples of my work, Enjoy!
Poetry
Sing to the Bean
Knowing her fate she had jumped
out of the colossal cave that holds
the foreboding blade.
She has fallen on the marble
countertop; now trembling,
hides behind the blender.
Escape is sweet she knows as the blade
begins to sing its mind numbing song.
Foul noise encompassing all space,
abominable fate stealing her friends.
And it sings and it sings. And then
it is silent
Now lifeless grains, the companions
are poured
into the ghastly sheet ready for
the sweltering liquid to ooze over
their severed corpses.
Drip, drip, drip, the plastic basin
sings and
feeds the vessel beneath.
Black as the witching hour
potent liquid to please the mouth
of he who kills her kind.
Oh horror!
Sing to the Bean
Oh fate!
Sing to the Bean
Oh loss, sing to the Bean
Oh, life saved, sing, sing to the hidden bean.
Turquoise Sweater
My eyes scan the vastness and only see
turquoise.
Across the room, no one is familiar.
My eyes hook on soft
turquoise.
My feet float. The
turquoise grows larger.
Later his manner is softer than his
turquoise sweater.
You like this? He whispers. Yes, I like
turquoise.
I like the sleeves, I feel the contours of the
turquoise forming
to his slightly unfit form. I like it.
Turquoise burns my eyes.
Turquoise stole my heart. The
turquoise sweater in the center
on the floor.
He will not always wear the
Turquoise sweater.
A short story...
Time Machine
We are sitting in my favorite coffee place, Jrink, on the corner of Trent and Livingston. I am facing the window and behind Helen I see the Museum of Natural History just past the "n" stuck on the window. Her long, slender leg twitches nervously and I hear her checkered high heels clicking the ground as her leg moves up and down. Neither of us speaks a word for, what seems like, 20 minutes. We just sit in the hard wooden chairs looking at each other and then away. Back at each other. Away again. I think how I love her chestnut eyes just as much today as I did the day I first met her. I take her hand and notice that this week´s choice of nail polish color is navy blue.
"Helen, is there a reason you wanted me to come here today?" Jrink is our favorite place, so it is not out of the ordinary for us to hang out here. The silence is what is out of the ordinary. Usually Helen talked a mile a minute. I wonder if she is trying to tone it down.
The color of her nails would change, her hair would grow gray faster that most women, and instead of gaining weight with age, she´ll lose it, but her talking rate is one thing that would never change as time passed.
"I just like to sit here and gaze at people. I like to think about what they are thinking." She hesitates. "But really, today I am thinking about what you are thinking." She looks down nervously at her cute, perfectly flattened tummy.
"I am thinking that you have and will most definitely always have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen." That is true. Her eyes would always be the same. Her eyes would hold all the secrets of our lives together, her eyes would show age, but not in an "old" way, in a wise way. Her eyes would always tell me how she feels before she opens her mouth.
"and I can see you are nervous from the silence…"
"Travis, I don´t mind the… I´m pregnant"
My stomach turns and now I am the silent one. All I see is her flat tummy beneath her pink sweater. All I hear is the espresso machine behind me, which slowly transforms in my head into the screams of a baby at 3 a.m. I realize I am staring into space and Helen is waving her hand in front of my face, saying my name slowly and as though it is a question.
"Travis…?" Her long brown hair is slung around her left shoulder. The sun begins to shine through the window making the pink stripes in her hair sparkle brilliantly. One day they would be gray stripes, but still reflecting the sunlight just as brightly. Then we would know that we wouldn´t have changed this for the world. Then we will know what a brilliant girl Helen had growing in her womb. Helen and I would be sitting in this same building, on the same street corner. We will look down at the car seat we have with us and see our grandchild, Rachel. We will see that she has Helen´s radiant eyes, just like her mother, Shawnna.
"Yup, hi." Her eyes don´t move anymore, they are fixed on me. I can´t avert my gaze because the splendor of her eyes doesn´t let me. She wants me to say more. "You know I love you. I always will. I want you to enjoy this. I didn´t think it would happen now, but it´ll be okay." I realize I am rambling and I stop.
"But financially…?"
"I can pick up more hours at Tim´s, it´ll be tight, but we´ll make it." I look at her and smile. She wipes her forehead with her hand as if she had been sweating. The rock on her left ring finger reminds me how okay this really is. I realize, as she gives me a big teeth-bearing grin, that no matter what I had said, she is ecstatic about this.
It is the same grin she would give me when we are watching our grandchild, waiting for our daughter, Shawnna, a successful cardio-surgeon, to get off work and come pick her daughter up. She won´t know that this is where I first found out about her existence. She won´t even know she was an "accident" baby. She won´t have any idea that she means anything different to us than her four younger brothers.
I stand up and walk around the table to Helen. I get down on my knees, pull up her sweater just a little bit, and kiss her tummy. She lets out a cute giggle. She slides off her chair, level to me, and kisses me. I love her more than I ever have. We hold hands, take our coffee to go, and walk out the door.
We would walk down the same street when we see Shawnna coming. I would embrace her as Helen holds Rachel. I would look into her beautiful chestnut eyes and love her as much as I did the day she was born. Shawnna will take the car seat from us, thank us, and walk to her car. Helen and I will walk away hand in hand, still in love. And I will notice that the nail polish color of the week is sunshine yellow.