3 Ways to Brainstorm/Write a Poem

Here are a few ways to get those brilliant poetic thoughts out of your head and onto the page that I have learned over the years and use on a regular basis.

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Three ways to brainstorm and write a poem:

The early stages of "Ninth"

• Panning for Gold. This method I learned from the endearing and wonderful poet Price Stobridge, the Poet Laureate for the Pikes Peak region of Colorado. This method will train you to be both concise and eloquent. I used this to write the poem "Ninth."
• Begin by taking a sheet of paper and tilting it 45˚ on the table in front of you.
• Write one word in the top corner of the paper--the first word that comes to mind when you think about the subject of your poetic effort.
• On the next line, write two words, or however long it takes to fill the crooked space between the two edges.
• Keep repeating this as you go along, writing whatever comes to mind, so long as the thought can cover the diagonal length.
• Whenever you feel like you're finished, go back through and turn the words or lines you like into a poem! 

Running in circles...

• Spiral. I invented this method myself, and I find it quite useful. It forces you to only focus on the words which you are currently writing--not the ones before, or the ones you haven't yet said. It also lets you focus purely on the language you use instead of punctuation or line-breaks--you can worry about those later. I wrote "Dreaming to Run" and "When I Swing With You" using this method.
• Begin writing across the page at an angle, and instead of dropping down at the end of each line, continue to write in a single stream that curves inward, twisting your paper or notebook so that the words go sideways, then up-side-down, then sideways again, then right-side-up, then sideways, and so on.
• Pretty soon, you should be forming a spiral, writing underneath the words you have already written.
• The spiral will eventually get tighter, reminding you to bring your thoughts down to an end.
• Wherever you run out of real-estate within the spiral, you're done.
• Go back through and write out the poem again, this time adding line breaks and writing it like a normal poem, between the lines.

They'll never know what hit 'em

• Immersion. This method is a little trickier to pull-off, because it requires that you have the ability to write in spontaneous situations. But, it can also lead to some very interesting work. I wrote "Be Still, My Soul" and "The Child's Eyes" while listening to some great sermons that I still remember even years later.
• Carry a pen or pencil and some paper with you anywhere you will be listening to someone speak in front of a crowd. This can be during a lecture, a sermon, or while eavesdropping on someone else's conversation at a coffee shop. The main key here is to listen to someone else talk as you write.
• Find some way in which the thing that you are hearing connects to a thought or a feeling that you have, and just start writing the first words that come to mind. 
• Take cues from the speaker. Maybe incorporate specific words or phrases that you hear into your poem.

There you have it! Three fresh ways to help you brainstorm and write your next poem! Let me know how these ideas work for you, but never feel restrained to anything anyone tells you about creative writing. Experiment! 

Have any other ideas for brainstorming poetry? Let me know in the comments!

Be Still, My Soul

A poem for those who have felt as though they knew very little about themselves.

Be still my soul!
Thy survival, thy fitness,
dependeth not upon thy existence,
but upon thy waiting, upon thy doubts.
Thy swelling notes soareth above thy ability,
but thou hast no courage,
thou hast sole doubt.
Thou and He, He made men’s mouths,
thou sole made it speaketh.
How, then, dost thy brain findeth
a place upon which I hath yet to
step foot?
Speaketh! And be still.
Stepeth forth, and exhale.
Thou dost not knoweth of thy face,
of thy voice—
If thou dost, thou
sayeth not to me of thy wisdom—
and thus, thy face blindeth
my eyes, and I knoweth not of
thy identity.
Be still, my soul—
Be still.

When I Swing With You

A poem for those still searching.

This is my curse:
I sit on a swing alone
with wind-dried cheeks
the swing beside me alone as well
and the breeze pushes her
but I: still.
I wonder who could be sitting there
my playground crush is
the pretty girl with white hair
and anonymous eyes
with brows like the sphinx
and lips encased in glass—

We have been together since I was a boy
she followed me from the moment I discovered her
but has changed over the years
without notice without permission
I find momentary fulfillment in thinking about her sometimes
because it hurts in a way that reminds me
of the dark hue of my hair
the expanding glow in my eyes
the distracted grain of my brow
the thoughtful texture of my lips—
Reminds me that I am real
that someday, she: still, like me.

I am now on Twitter--follow me @ChanRydWrites!

Ninth

A poem about the transitions between one time and the next.

If I am lucky, I will have maybe a dozen songs, all of which
I will play ceaselessly, out of order, each only for a few seconds at one time,
always looping back to those I will have already heard.
I will be disjointed, confused, afraid—
hesitate at every pause, wondering:
Could this be my last note?

There is fear in the transition,
of leaving one tone, one work,
calling it finished, forgetting almost everything,
and moving on.
The next sound, the next beginning,
a new chorus,
wearisome, exhausting, obsessed,
and suddenly the previous eight symphonies fly through my ears,
reminding me that nine comes after eight, after seven, after six, and so on,
then fin—
It is finished,
and begin again.

Leave your thoughts in the comments!

How Humanity Moved Underground

Inspired by Bradbury's "The Rocket-Man" and Scott-Card's Ender's Game, this is a grounded science-fiction short story about a twelve-year-old boy living in a near-future world.

The organ escorted them out the doors of the church, into the light of a perfectly blue sky that washed the manicured, monastic lawn in brilliant light that no one would entirely notice, save for the twelve-year-old boy trotting in front of his family. His hard shoes drummed the concrete. They let him explore, because Owen always was exploring and re-exploring the same territory over again.

America was in no need of any form of population control, unlike many other countries across the globe, and thus the family had their own house, two children, and lived so close they could walk home from church on a Sunday just-barely-afternoon. The grasses were green, and nuclear families had white picket fences with barbecues and an obedient dog out back. Owen thought the whole place was quite alright. It was certainly a sight for sore eyes to see a house and a barbecue and a dog, or, at least, Owen thought it would be a sight for sore eyes, after a long space voyage and a long landing and a long day and a long drive all the way home from the long landing strip. His father was an astronaut.

The walk was not long back to the house from the church. The whole church building was made of plastic and glass, and looked like a rocket ship to Owen. Rocket ships were cool most of the time.

And the house looked entirely land-locked, square with a slanting roof with the shingles stapled on there with electric guns, and the beams made to look like wood even though they were plastic. They sure were strong, because Owen could do pull-ups on a beam in the garage. Jeepers, they must have strong to hold up the whole gosh-darned plastic house. Owen bet the whole place was built in a day, just like Rome must have been, because it was all plastic, too. History was all plastic, and the future was all plastic, and the only thing that wasn’t plastic was now, because people were in it.

Owen wondered what the heck the house would look like when it all burned down. It would probably happen eventually, Owen figured. It would probably all melt like the wicked witch when Dorothy threw the water on her. That movie was old. So gosh-darned old that Owen could see the pixels floating through the air on the holovision set when he got so close that his nose nearly went through the floating image and Jenny would yell at him so she could see the flying monkeys. She was very morbid. Very morbid because she liked things like flying monkeys. Owen learned what morbid was when his mother used it to describe the way his father loved the thought of space. Not just space itself, but his father loved the idea of space more than anything. Owen assumed he loved it more than his mother because of the way he would lose himself in a telescope on Earth and in a rocket-ship in space, so that he never was really home for mother. Owen had become used to the idea of not having a father because of space, but he recognized that mother needed a husband regardless. Owen became good at yard work and being a little handyman, but that was all he could do for her. He was no husband in the smallest degree. It would probably burn down soon anyway.

That night, when the sky was as full of stars as the moon was of glowing white light, Owen left his window open and stared out at the oblivion until it hurt to think about all of the things out in space. His father said it was mostly empty. Owen knew better. Space was entirely full of whatever people brought with them. His father must have liked whatever it was he brought with him, because he loved space, and loved the idea of space more than anything.

“I think I can start to see green.” Owen could hear his father’s voice carry through his open bedroom window. “Terraforming must be going better than they let on,” he said.

“Hmm,” his mother replied.

“Just look here,” the chair scraped across the concrete. He must have stood up so she could see. “You can see the clusters of clouds around the greenhouse towers. Those SOB’s were right.” Sons of bees, his father would tell him, but Owen knew bees were bitches, he just didn’t quite know why anyone would care to say such an offensive word. Euphemisms were fine, in Owen’s opinion, because, as far as he could tell, they accomplished a near-identical goal without causing anyone undue distress. Even the concept of the expletive, euphemism or not, was unnecessary. Why say a single word to express a broad spectrum of emotion? It made that single word meaningless and wrought from pain rather than wrought from joy. It sullied something that could be a great achievement, like terraforming mars, and turned all those thousands of engineers even tangentially related to the project into bastard children of shameful lineage with just a few words. Mars would be forever tainted.

Still, Owen used euphemisms. He felt dirty whenever he swore.

His father was still talking, “Do you see the clouds?” he asked of his mother. “Do you see the green beginning to poke out here and there? Look, you can even see the water as it’s filling in the Vastitas Borealis. They’re calling it the Borealis Ocean! Do you know what that means? There will be a beach! Imagine that, Marylin, a beach.”

“We’ve had this discussion already. I don’t want to be apart of your space odyssey. I want you to be here, grounded, planted to the kids and to me.” There was a pause. “I want you to be with me.”

They were probably kissing. He was glad he couldn’t hear the sound of their lips smacking and sliding across each other’s mouths. And there was probably tongue, too. Tongue.

“You’re finally back,” she said, “and you’re already dreaming of flying away.”

“But this time it would be together.”

“No, it wouldn’t. You would still be an astronaut, and I would just be your wife behind the picket fence. There would always be a picket fence.”

“Marylin, just listen to me. Think of our kids on the beach. Think of being the first.”

“I don’t care about being the first, John. I don’t care about paving the way.”

“The country is having trouble upholding the borders, diplomacy is failing abroad—oppression is here, we just can’t see it. It’s the American way, baby. It’s the idea of running away, expanding, conquering, rebelling, and finally settling down to a place we can call our own. That’s what we’ve always done. That’s what we need to do now. We can be together in the stars. It’s only a three month voyage. I can find a way to get us there,” he said. “I can find a way to get us there, I promise.”

“John,” his mother sighed. “How can you think like that?” Her tone was condescending. “How can you care about all those far away planets and stars when the only world that matters is right here, inside that house? I used to dream about space more than anyone, but I simply don’t care anymore. No amount of empty space call fill a home. Only a family can do that. I wish I could say that you are still a part of this family as much as you are a part of space, but I can’t. Come back to Earth, John.”

The next few days were plastic. His father tried playing catch with Owen, but his mind was already too jumbled to know that his father was being genuine. Owen threw the ball back and forth, but it never mattered to him if he missed his father. He would miss, and his father would run to save the ball from the dog, but Owen felt nothing about the ball in the sky. It was all plastic. Every gosh-darned bit of it. It seemed to Owen that even the present could be put into a mold and set to cool.


***


“Why are you digging?” his younger sister, Jenny, asked.

He didn’t look up. “I realized that I like dirt.”

“Why do you like dirt?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

She sat down. “Can I help?”

He had been digging with a spade. “Bring two shovels,” he said.


***


In the backyard, the picket-fence was older, less refined, and was made of wood. It needed to be white-washed again every few years because the paint would fade and become flaky and fall away. It was almost grey the summer after Owen turned thirteen. His father would be away on another voyage for most of the summer, but he would be back in time for the school year, and he said that this would be his last voyage for a while.

Owen woke early, just as the sun was eclipsing the neighbor’s house and pouring into his room. He left the blinds open so that the sun would wake him. His eyes flickered open, and he took a breath of cool morning air wafting through the window. He peeled the covers back from his warm body and slid out of bed and onto the rug. He searched for a clean shirt in his dresser, but all of the shirts he found either had collars or were nice t-shirts he liked to wear around town. They were shirts he would wear when going to a party or a picnic, where pretty girls would notice his burgeoning sense of style. Most boys his age didn’t give a damn about style. That would change for them eventually.

But the shirts.

His hamper was overflowing with shirts crusted dirt and hardened by dried sweat. Pulling out a few different shirts, he roughly felt each one, finding the smoothest and least streaked with dirt. He found one that he had only worn for a few hours about mid-way through the stack. He lifted it to his nose. It smelled fine, even though it was heavily wrinkled. He shrugged. There wouldn’t be any pretty girls where he was going. He caught himself. There would be one pretty girl, he amended, but she didn’t count because she was his sister. She was only eleven. Such a tender age.

He pulled on a pair of stained white shorts that were forming holes at critical seams like around the pockets and the butt. He didn’t care about those. It didn’t matter if his sister saw his boxers—she saw him all the time around the house in them. He slept in his boxers now, and nothing else. It made him feel strong.

He walked to the window and gazed out at the morning light. His bedroom faced East, toward the sun as it slowly lifted off of the ground and danced in the sky. The incandescent glow pinged off of a window and refracted through a drop of water clinging to his window screen, creating an iridescent melody of light just inches from his nose. In the distance, he could see a house beginning to lean to one side, collapsing in on itself. It was burning down. He tried to think of who might live in that house, but it was too far away for him know anyone who used to live there.

He slipped down the stairs and grabbed a bowl of cereal—not Cocoa Puffs, he had work to do, but some crunchy mix of oats and thick corn-flakes—and sat down at the counter, munching on his morning’s ration of energy. He should eat more carbs today than he did the day before, because he was quite tired at the end of yesterday. He ate a granola bar as well.

He filled a backpack with water bottles and slung it over his shoulder. The shovels were already out there, along with a stack of four foot long two-by-fours, a heavy-duty saw, a hammer, nails, and a pickax. It was time to do some digging.

He made his way across the yard, pushed aside the broken fencepost, and slipped onto the snaking trail behind the house. He jogged to the dig, scaring a few rabbits out of his way before stopping at the edge of the neighborhood. He had been exploring the area last summer with Jenny when they discovered a drainage ditch that let them sneak under the brick wall guarding the gated neighborhood and into a wide, open, and flat field, slated for development in two years: 2060. That field was where they had started the experiment.

Owen found the hidden entrance easily, pulled back the camouflaged cover, and descended the ladder after replacing the cover. After reaching the bottom, he realized that something was different: the lights were on. He had made sure to turn them off yesterday, leaving only one option.

“Jenny?”

“Yeah? I’m back here!”

Owen walked in and dropped his pack against the wall. “Couldn’t sleep again?” he asked.

She pulled off her hard-hat and wiped a streak of dirt from her cheek. She set her shovel down.

“Did you see the house?” Owen asked.

“Another one?” She sat down. “They’re going faster. I saw Mom on the telescope last night. She’s thinking about it.”

Owen shook his head. “A year ago she was so against it.” He put his hands on his hips.

“It’s Dad. He’s going to come home soon.” Jenny sipped water. “She just wanted him to come home.”

“How can he care about space? It’s all too far away to matter. It’s just another thing, and we have too many things anyway, getting in the way of everything.” Owen paused and leaned against the wall. “They say the beach is almost ready out there,” Owen commented. “I’ve been watching the reports. And they’ve got houses now. The air is almost breathable in some spots. I think it’s only a matter of time before Mom changes her mind.”

Jenny scrunched her face. “Then somebody will come and burn down our house, and somebody else will come and mold a new one that’s better, and we’ll be all gone, not even any of our stuff left behind, all our beds gone, all our stuff gone.”

Owen nodded. To hell with plastic. It didn’t remember a damn thing.

He grabbed a shovel. Began digging. They had almost made two rooms. They could stand up in them. Soon the walls would be finished with the two-by-fours, and then they could put in floors and drywall and furniture, and it would be almost like home.

It was the start of how humanity moved underground.

Owen started a revolution. He was like a hero. The plot of land grew grasses and trees, and was dotted with steps and elevators leading down into illuminated homes. Mars stopped stealing Earth.

Owen rubbed his eyes. It was a long day, he should get home.

Like Owen? Be sure to share his story on all of the social medias!

Image Source:

Blackwell, Ashley. "Just a Boring Life Update." He Calls Me Lovely. N.p., 14 June 2014. Web. 19 June 2014. <http://alovelywalk.blogspot.com/>.

Guest Writer, Adam Avischious: "How does one move on from such a tragedy?"

In light of the recent Seattle Pacific University shooting, a friend at SPU has requested for me to post this article of his reaction to the tragedy.

Written by Adam Avischious

How does one move on from such tragedy? It is not an easy thing to fathom. A shooting at your school. But it was more than that. This is not just a school. It is a university, a college where people travel long distances to be here. To live here. This was not a shooting at a school but a shooting at a home. A place of residence. It is where I live, where I walk, where I am. It is more than a school, it is a home. To have this kind of act committed in your home… it’s just… indescribable. The feeling is one of brokenness.

I was in my room when I received the lockdown messages on my phone. I glanced quickly and saw “lockdown.” I assumed that it was something that was happening around campus, not on, but close enough to cause alarm. It wouldn’t be the first time. So I went back to my computer screen. Within two minutes I received a text from both my brother and girlfriend that came in together. “Okay, maybe something else is happening,” I thought as I closed what I was doing. I picked up my phone to read through ever thing when it started to ring. It was Anna. I don’t remember what exactly was said but one line: “There is a shooting”. I froze.

“What?” was my response. I fell onto the couch in my room and sat for a moment. I was still on the phone with Anna and we just sat. I probably only sat for a few seconds but it felt like longer. I went to my computer and looked for something. I found a live stream as well as several articles from different news stations. There were conflicting numbers and reports but one thing was for sure. There had been a shooting, and it wasn’t near campus or in the neighborhood. No, it was on campus. In a building where I have had classes. In an area that I have walked through, sat in, talked in, somewhere that I could see in my mind. Otto Miller Hall had a shooting occur in the lobby.

From then on it was just disbelief. The different reports had different number of people injured, number of shooters and that sort of thing. Eventually they all had the same story: four went to the hospital, and one shooter. As my floor mates and I sat in a room we watched all that was being released on TV and sat. We all called and texted family and friends, many of us hearing from people who we would generally not talk to or hear from. All worried and had heard the news. That it had happened here, at SPU, a school shooting.

The reports continued and eventually the lockdown was lifted when the situation was deemed safe. Then the reports changed. One of the people who was taken to the hospital in critical condition has passed away… 1 dead. No names given or mentioned (which I understand) but that didn’t matter. The air in the room I was in changed. My heart sank. A floor brother had just walked in and asked if I had heard the news. I said yes and we put our arms around each other’s shoulder and stood there watching the screen.

Later as I was sitting in my room Anna came in. She curled up next to me on the couch and we sat there. We didn’t talk other than the “hey” when she came in. We sat. We experienced sadness. Heartbreak. Worry. Fear. Humility. Gratitude. Sadness to be a part of it. Heartbreak hearing the devastating news. Worry of what to come next. Fear of what to do. Humility, how fragile everything really is. Gratitude, that the other was safe. The emotions I felt were almost overwhelming but I wasn’t going to cry. Not yet. As I had already done many times before, I prayed. I prayed that God would give us strength to carry on. I prayed that He would comfort us in our brokenness and be with us in our struggle. This is where the tears came. With wet eyes we looked around trying to figure out what to do next.

                So with the events that occurred I wondered. It is almost easy when I’m alone in my room to forget what happened. To almost be as if it didn’t happen. But then I stand up and walk into the hall. There is no forgetting then. It is a somber experience, seeing the pain on your friend’s faces, knowing their hurt. Events such as these are not so easily forgotten. I don’t think they should be. So for now I will mourn and lament with my fellow students. With my fellow family members of God as we see what great things He will create from our ashes.

Prayer circles and meetings are common and happen often. We are living in a place where this brokenness cuts deep and it is difficult to talk about. There is not much to say. What one person knows, most everybody knows. Where do you go from here? From this place of heartache? From this broken state? I continually pray for God’s strength and His comfort. But I do not think I can pray for peace just yet. As much pain as it is, and the amount of confusion that surrounds it, we, as an SPU community, will live into this pain. We shall live into this suffering for the time. We shall unite under the love and power of God and He will protect us. He shall transform us. He will be our banner and our light amidst this darkness and conflict. We shall lament these events and pray for wisdom and strength. We will pray that Christ is with us and will guide us. We will live into this suffering and we shall trust in the Lord’s plan and continue on.

I ask for prayers for myself, my friends, family, this community, and those affected by this tragedy. I ask that you appreciate what you have and those around you. 

My Friends on the Lake

A deep poem about the vice of beauty. 

Inspired by a statue in Milwaukee made by internationally renowned artist Jaume Plensa.

And I lived there,

where my seagull floated through the sun and

perched above the lake when the clouds became

swirling orange and thrashing red, before turning to stiff steel.

He reminded me that I was alone.

They all did.

My breath came in clouds, swept away by

the flogging wind surging across the petrified, glassy mirror.

All of the reflection, save for me, was

beautiful, I tell you.

We were all neighbors—the same—for those moments,

but the (scrambled letters) (lies) empty inside my voice.

We sank together, and we died together.

That was why I was on the lake.

I could have written about it.

I could have formed either a raft or a cloud with my bare hands

and a pen

—the raft would have saved my life, the cloud would have given me meaning—

but instead, I heard the ice crack as it fingered my spine,

left me in wide silence.

And I do not hesitate to tell you that I screamed for a second

as I fell beneath the water.

But the sky remained the same, because

the wind had stolen my breath,

the seagull had killed my cloud,

and I had refused to build a raft.

“Call

Call me an

It’s beauty, It’s beauty in death:

we drown, my friends, we

are neighbors now.”