How to Write a Good Poem

WARNING: I am not claiming that I am an expert on writing poetry by any means, however these are a few things that I have picked up along the way.

1. A poem is your soul speaking in images. So write what you are passionate about. The most meaningful poems to me are the ones that I relate to personally. Write about your dog, your home, your last relationship, but give it a twist. Insert a colorful metaphor, taste your figurative language, just go for that alliteration. Just get the idea down.

2. I've heard this excuse a lot, "I'm just not good a poetry." Lies, perhaps you haven't practiced. I live by the mantra of, if you're passionate about it, you're going to do it better than someone who isn't as passionate about it. I want you to think about a glass of water, the glass of water is like a novel, novella, short story-whatever, but poetry is the condensation on that glass. Poetry takes all of the sensations of story writing and condenses them. Good poetry is pristine, every word is functioning to create a perfected crystalline droplet.

3. Read good poetry. That's it. I'm going to quote Macklemore, which sounds kind of cliche because I'm telling you to read good poetry....but that's besides the point. "The greats were great because they painted a lot." Great poets aren't made over night, they are people, much more qualified than I who've perfected their craft, their style. Go read up on Silvia  Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson. These poets know what it's like to be a true poet, see what they think it means to be a true poet. What do you think it means to be a true poet? Look up contemporary poets, find your niche. Are you spoken word? More of a meter and form kind of person? Explore your options! You'll get nothing but excited.

4. My personal favorite tip. Condense. You don't need it, drop it. It tastes clunky, drop it. Write a poem with seventy two stanzas, then write what you remember of those stanzas, because the ones that you remember are probably the most potent.

5. Find somewhere to write and just write. Whether that be on a mountain top, in your room at 12:57 am, or in a local coffee shop. You have the best equipment in the world, a poet's heart. Give it a spin.

Good  Luck Kids,

xoxox

-SD

Best Friends

I can’t remember my first infant cry or the breath connected to that cry, but I know that they happened. It seems that in our lives there is an unspoken rule that we remember our firsts. It’s because  in these pivotal moments that we have an opportunity to transcend a horizon in our lives as we tightrope across that band between the past and the future. We are at our most vulnerable in the journey to the other side because it is a first.

​ That's why we usually​

 remember our firsts with crystalline clarity.  However, I cannot recall the moment Alysha and I became best friends. Our development as friends wasn’t a time jarring moment; rather a sliver, a moment that I took with me that changed me forever. Our friendship was inevitable in the way that it just came into existence, in Alysha I found a true soul sister.

Alysha was a beautiful bright eyed eighteen-year old, who owned enough gypsy headbands to wear for an entire month, which she in fact did. She was a successful self 

​taught​

 photographer whose mastery of catching natural light was enviable. I on the other hand was an anxious twenty-year old Navajo who was struggling through her junior year at the University majoring in Creative Writing. I couldn’t manage my time well and suffered the repercussions of that. Alysha on the other hand hadn’t yet started college and she lived in a townhome a few blocks away from mine with her brothers and newly divorced mother. In small town Smithfield, Utah, Alysha was an anomaly, sporting a strawberry blonde pixie cut with large hoop earrings most likely made in some obscure town in South America. Alysha’s family was Canadian with polite vocabulary such as sorey (sorry) and beag (bag), her accent made her even more of a novelty in our not so diverse hometown.  

She truly was a gypsy, never staying in one place for too long. Her colorful past included living in British Columbia, Washington, and Colorado, when to her dismay she moved to small town in Cache Valley filled with cows, tractors, and people who dropped their “t’s” and didn’t shop on Sundays.  She definitely wasn’t your every day Molly Cache Valley, but neither was I. Although I had lived in Cache Valley for fifteen years, I was raised traditionally Navajo, with ceremonies, and adorned with turquoise squash blossoms from the moment I could walk.

However, she and I were different types of different; I wore my differences with unmet eyes and a heavy hand of sarcasm. She wore hers in an inviting smile and a laugh that could be heard from the other room. Alysha taught me to own my differences and be unashamedly myself. She taught me to be passionate about everything- from pinpricked pines, to the way a pair of sport leggings made you look like a million bucks; I discovered that disguised in the seemingly ordinary was the brilliant. I finally learned how to breathe and live in moments rather than just waiting for them to pass. During drives through a blushing fall canyon, I learned that being passionate about something- anything- wasn’t a weakness, rather the greatest expression of self that we could wield as humans.

 So we cried in mountains, either because something was so funny or because the weight of our lives was too much at that time.  Our conversations were sped up by fading light and lit by headlamps during night rock climbing. In nature we found ourselves as inseparable as a constellation in the night sky. We stole into nature when we couldn’t understand our selves, when she couldn’t accept a new step-mother, when I struggled to connect with my estranged father, and when we didn’t have faith in ourselves.

Alysha taught me so many things such as the art of flirting, how to pee in the woods, and how to tie a cherry stem with your tongue. Together we perfected the art of eye conversations. We traversed sketchy trails in nature and navigated the changing seasons of our lives. She was my soul-sister, rock-climbing partner, nature buddy, photographer, and inspiration. Through her camera lens I found a beauty in myself I had never seen before, the beauty that was lit by living your truth.

            And then, I found myself standing in front of the door way of her home, the smell of a soy candle burning from the kitchen wafting through the hall. She handed me a notebook and a bar of chocolate from our favorite free-trade store. Alysha was about to leave for eighteen months on a service mission in which she couldn’t be reached, except by snail mail. We wore tears shamelessly, as we usually did.

            “I’m going to miss you so much.” I cried, “Who else is going to eat burritos with me?”

            “Don’t forget the burgers.” She laughed, mascara marathon-ing down her face.

We hugged. Our sobs rocking us noticeably in-between awkward laughs, I floundered for what to say to her, some collection of words that encapsulated the last few months that we had been best friends. Our title was somewhat new, but felt fitting. My mind flashed through inside jokes, mountain passes, Freudian slips, and vegging out on her couch. I couldn’t find anything to say, so I hugged her one last time and pulled away.

            “Goodbye.” She said.

            “See you later.” I corrected.

            “Exactly.” She said.

I went home and opened up my notebook and enveloped within the flap was a letter typed on her grandfather’s typewriter.

Dear Stacie,

            You are my best friend. I didn’t even know it was possible for someone to understand me so well. You have taught me so much about myself and about life because of your fearless authenticity and passion about being who you are and living your dreams.

            I don’t know how I will ever be able to thank you, and I sure as hell don’t know how I’m going to live without seeing you for eighteen months. My soul is just so content around you, you know?

            I find it really interesting that you walked into my life right as Hannah was walking out of it. I think that it was meant to be, you know?  I’m 99% sure you’re going to change the world through your writing and through service. I am beyond lucky that I had the chance to be friends with such an incredible person. I’m going to miss you and our adventures and 3 am conversations more than anything. You are the greatest soul sister and best friend a girl could ever have.

I LOVE YOU

love, Alysha

There on unlined paper was the definition of our friendship, creased by her hand. My greatest friendship didn’t need to be a circus show rather it was a small thing that became a part of me, like a sliver.​

Sliver

I walked on a sliver of horizon

in ribbed tube socks.  Those shredded clouds followed,

a trail of heaven’s lint.

Heel toe.Heel toe. Building that

                                    static.

Crowds watched me, with fresh lacquered eyes.

She can’t do it.

She’ll surely die.

My socks unravel on the crest of the

       moon.

 Mortal strands are a tangled

                                                   web.

The poet’s soul is dead on arrival.

Passionate to the point of

                                                asphyxiation.

Life.

Does it really matter that if in some zombie like state,

someone liked your status?

We don’t discuss like the geniuses of the past anymore,

we clutch our keyboards and hide blue faced behind screens.

We filter what we want people to see.

When’s the last time we had a real conversation?

When we weren’t thinking about the text, snap, like,

Tweet, or follow we just got. When our hands didn’t

hover anxiously over our pockets as if by some miracle

that one ‘fine’ implied all that we wanted it to.

Have we forgotten how to talk to the people in the room?

We’ve become slaves to ourselves, in an effort to connect with

each other, we’ve connected to the outlets in walls.

 God forbid your phone run out of juice…

Because this cord connects you to the outside world,

As if it were your mother’s umbilical cord,

as if your phone granted you life.

When did we have to start proving ourselves?

My kid is the cutest, look at my sandwich, I put on my makeup today…

When did affirmation become an addiction?

As if 3,000 likes could really replace the satisfaction of placing a pair of tube socks

into the hands of a homeless woman and watching her face light up.

Because just for that moment, her burden was lifted just a little. 

But wait, I’ve forgotten, you’ve chosen to live between the replies.

Halting me, with your finger, to tell me to wait a minute while

you respond to someone who isn’t here.

You’ve resigned yourself to a text bubble that reads, (…)

Just waiting for a reply. Waiting to live until you have wifi.

How many minutes, hours, days, years have you swiped away?

How many opportunities in our real lives have we scrolled past…

In the anticipation of one lousy ‘like’?

Butchering

Fist balled she glides the skin away from flesh.
She sinks them elbow deep down between the skin and the hide.
You try she instructs
I ball my small brown fists, little marbles beneath skin.
My knuckles scrape against the red, it's warm inside the sheep.
My knuckles are pink as kitten noses.
Grandmother's palms are flat as she grips my face and presses her lips to my forehead.
She just wrapped the fat with the intestines. Achii.

Dr. Pepper can greasy tinned rolled in salt sits on the gingham table cloth.
Fizz burns down my throat.
Flies linger on clumps of fat.

I chase them with the fly swatter.
Grandma taught me how to kill them.
The neon blue mesh whistles through the air.
SMACK! It's dotted black.

Grandmother never slapped my face, but Momma sits there.
She's smiling, thirty six years old, but still stinging.

Outside the butchered skin hangs, hardening in the sun, wool matted with sand. 

Nightwatch

Mosquito's hum with the tune of hunger
somewhere within the space of a cornfield we lay.
Palms sticky with ice cream.
Cold plastic spoons fallen overboard.
She's the flat disk in the sky, we've come to see.
Preening.
Larger than ever. Illuminating the night.
The stars are nothing in her bright arm's length. 

we are like stars in the sky.

into the wild.

 

Let's get lost in the mountains and write poetry, okay? okay.