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A Journey With You

~ surviving schizophrenia

A Journey With You

Category Archives: poems I wrote

Shutting Down the Screen

02 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by A Journey With You in poems I wrote, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

flash, flash nonfiction, ideas, mental health, newsfeed, nonfiction, poetry, popular culture, prose, prose poem, screen time, social media, writing

Sitting in Starbucks, I look out the window at all the people walking down the street. Going where? Places. Faces. Moving. The world is traveling faster than I am. Millions of songs I have never heard. Hundreds of millions of books I have never read. So many countries and cities I have never seen. I can’t keep up. Social media travels so quickly. Food I have never eaten pictured on my newsfeed, along with what is considered “in” regarding popular culture. Trends. Fashion. Politically correct language and scenarios. I am going to slow down, step back and synthesize all that I have learned about people, places, art, changes in our language, our speech, our culture. I can’t incorporate all the information as quickly as it passes by me. I have enough new information to chew on for many years. Enough to help me grow, develop, change. But without a break from the lightning fast speed of all that information I can’t use what I’ve learned. Ideas need to germinate like seeds. I need water and the sun and space and time to breathe. I’ll miss the updates, but I am certain my roots will grow deeper, and my branches will become heavy with fruit from stepping away from the screens and learning to live life without the constant ding of a notification.

A Bedtime Story

10 Sunday May 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in articles I wrote, poems I wrote, writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

bedtime story, childhood, children's literature, writing

I wrote this fifteen years ago.  Forgive the errors.  This is a flash back.

http://www.bedtime.com/html/the_rainbow.htm

Open Heart Surgery (a poem)

03 Sunday May 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in poems I wrote, writing

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

contest, heart surgery, poems, poetry, writing

One of my poems won a poetry contest.  You can read it here:

http://brightlypress.com/p/contest-winners

The Last Act: Steve Kowit

03 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in poems I wrote, relationships, schizophrenia, writing

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

life, love, mental health, mental illness

I can’t open my e-mails. I need to clean out my inbox, but I can’t see his words right now.  He died yesterday. I loved him.

His poetry group was the first place where I openly came out about my schizophrenia. Even with that, he once told me I was one of the clearest thinkers he knew.

He never judged me. He never treated me as less than. He was a champion of my poetry and prose. He wrote me a letter for graduate school. I got accepted.

When graduate school turned out to be a joke, he felt personally responsible for encouraging me to try the program. Of course, the problem with the program had nothing to do with him. I applied to another school. He wrote another letter. I got accepted.

He published my poems in Serving House Journal, and accepted a poem for The Reader that was supposed to come out this month. I don’t know if it ever will. I wish it would, so I could hold on to the memory that he believed in me.

That’s it. He was a successful writer, and teacher, and he believed in me.

Of course, he believed in hundreds and hundreds of people, but all of us felt as if we were the only one. He had that knack.  He possessed the ability to make every writer, mostly poets, he encountered feel as if they were special, and he gave all of us his attention.

He wrote endless letters, and endorsements, and gave feedback continuously on the poems that flooded his inbox.  I don’t think he believed in God, but I believe enough for both of us, and if there is an inbox in heaven, his is already full of poems from all his poetry friends he told me went before him. He is reading poetry. I am sure of it.

And making jokes, and serving snacks to everyone, “Here, try one of these. Have some. Take some home.”

Home, he is home now, or at least that is what people say. I thought his home was with us. He was always a natural wherever he was. Laughing. Joking. Laughing. Joking. He freely gave out good, sound writing advice, all kinds of advice on how to live, and be a writer.

He wanted us all to succeed, and the funny thing is he made us all feel like we had.

I had no confidence as a writer when I met him. I wouldn’t even call myself that. I was just someone who wrote an occasional poem. He built me up, block by block. I have a business card now that has the word, writer, printed on it.

He gave me that, and so much more.

Good-bye my friend, my mentor.  I have to keep pushing on, because that is how you would have wanted it. “Do it!” “Go for it!” “That’s a great idea!” “You are so smart!”

Your words will now have to hold me over until we meet at the next poetry workshop, the one where you’ll need to introduce me all over again.

You are among the greats now.

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