Poems

Occasionally I would write while alone when I felt the urge to express myself.  Like many writers, once I wrote it and then later read it back, this led to self-criticism and I would just leave it alone, but over time the need to express on paper what I was conjuring in my head, got greater and greater.  On rare occasions, I would trust someone enough to let them read something I wrote, but never read it to them aloud. 

It was about this time I started College and misdirected and aimless as I was at that time, I was drawn to writing and arts.  I even took a class on Library Science to assist me in finding topics and authors.

How many of you think Poets are weird boring people?  I know I did.  In fact, when I would write Poetry I would do it in seclusion and say nothing of it to anyone.  On occasion I would read again what I wrote a few days later and think it was ridiculous stuff and would throw it away.  Even then careful not to throw it where someone might find it.  Right now, if you go on YouTube and type in "Poets or Poetry", the readers, and authors are less than interesting people.  Sorry, but they are.  Their writings could be beautiful, but the author is strange.  It took a few humorous limericks to beckon my shy fearful side out in the open.  After a few successes, I began to settle in and write what my heart was trying to say to me.

I'm sure most of us have done writing during our lives; limerick, prose, outhouse alliteration, etc., and sometimes that behavior dissolves and goes away with years, and sometimes like me it goes on forever. 

That's where I am. For me it’s a voice or prompting or observation of deeply engaging an event or a topic and when over I feel compelled to write about it. Many of us do this but choose a different medium to express the impression we have had, like telling our peers for example, or taking courses in Music and Physical and Conceptual Arts.

I have always chosen to express myself in writing when the voice is present, and to write it either in prose or poetic style, (assuming I am educated enough to know what that means). My Poetry is less than traditional. It’s inspired by the likes of Keats, Emerson, and the Transcendentalists; Frost and even Pushkin, Whitman, Thoreau, and T.S. Eliot. There are others whose writings alone influenced the way I look at life. Such as Twain, Poe, John Muir, Ernest Shackleton, and some of the most influential but less noteworthy (today) such as Cooper and his Romantic Frontier Adventure.  I found it amazing that people like Ernest Shackleton, chosen by the Queen of England to not only claim lands in the name of the Crown, but later she commanded him to set his writings in Metaphoric Style, a challenge as difficult as the Antarctic Adventure itself.  You can't help thinking like these great Authors when you read the writings.  It influences us, plain and simple, and not just in thoughts but style as well.

The voices of all who have influenced my thinking come into play when I write. Some of us don’t need such introjection, and it just flows without Model; these we call Genius, a branch of humanity I'm certain I claim to grafting to.

Not to force a comparison, but Bob Dylan has always been a bit of Enigma to me. I agree with the theoretical application of his and other’s songs and lyrics changing the direction of where music was headed, as did Hendrix and the Beatles, but I have always thought there was a voice in the air or somewhere and these early artists listened to the voice, while others listened to them. I heard him interviewed once and he came right out and admitted to this.  He claimed one day in August the Voice just went away. It seems true that it did leave, and this is both sad and fortuitous that it did so.

My Voice is only plain crazy. I'm not sure I want anyone to be following me, or blaming me for any outcomes from my Generation, I just hope that when I leave this unexplained adventure we are all on, that perhaps something I said may have startled someone, or at a minimum, may have caused them to feel, and in some rare cases bring an awaking, and the thought and the feeling into one Amalgam.  Once introduced, the reader or listener, reflects enough to say Ray wrote that.