Life on Paper Writing and performing spoken word poetry changed who I was as an individual. I embarked on a journey of expression through words that I never knew I was capable of piecing together. Spoken word set me apart from the generic crowd, on Friday nights when everyone I knew was at a high school football game, I sat alone at a desk in my room writing through pages and pages of paper, just touching on how I felt that day. It was very difficult for me at first, as is any form of artistic expression to a beginner.
I remember staring at blank pages for hours on end with a pen laced through my fingers. Words would flow through my head at a hundred miles an hour but I just couldn’t seem to find the right combination of them to express myself. I had so much to say but for some reason my inexperience just wouldn’t allow me to piece together my thoughts and I would slip into a state of lacked focus. Writing songs for the band that I played in was so easy because I would create these stories in my head of some fictional character in an awful situation and I could write from their perspective. I could separate my personal emotions from my writing and portray something that I was not, and that was a bitter being of hate. I am the epitome of happiness through love, I just had to prove it. I tried to capture my emotions on paper, and at first, that is all I did. I was straight-forward in my writing and I would speak of every emotion that I felt, but how is a mind supposed to wander when there is no room left for interpretation? I was writing to engage a listener, I wanted them to relate to my stories, not just hear them. I was so very inspired by the poets that I would listen to, and I constantly compared my work to theirs, bringing myself to the conclusion that my words left much to be desired. I had to take a different approach to my writing. I had to capture anyone who would read my words, I had to open my eyes and let another individual see through them. I had to open my heart and let someone else feel what I felt just by listening to what I had written at some ridiculous hour when all I had keeping me alive was a cold cup of coffee and an acoustic guitar.
The world is a beautiful place, and we all have so much to love. We are surrounded by happiness and we are all so fortunate in ways that we cannot seem to fathom. I just wished my vocabulary was extensive enough to appropriately display my true emotions. I never accepted the beauty of the world until I found beauty within myself. I fell in love with a girl named Audrey, and everything changed. She is spontaneous and gorgeous in every way imaginable, the kindness of her heart and the beauty of her soul has forever impacted my life. Before Audrey, I could never even begin to imagine finding anyone that I could place my complete trust in and I had never experienced feeling safe in someone else’s skin. Now that I have experienced such beauty, I can better portray my inner self. I remember daydreaming for hours on end, I would picture a beautiful sunset, just hovering over a pasture that never seemed to end. The weathered green road signs that Audrey and I would pass were a constant reminder that the world was ours for the taking. The sky was a pale blue, full of white kingdoms of smoke just waiting to be torn to pieces by an airplane full of people embarking on a journey that they would never forget. Her hair would flow in the wind from my passenger seat as my speakers gently displayed an ambience that was overwhelmed by our persistent laughter, conversation, and the constant reassuring that each of our futures undoubtedly involved one another. We would watch the sunset from my car as we had done an endless amount of times in the past, and she would fall asleep on my shoulder as the moon took his rightful place in the sky. By imagining all of this, I would snap out of this seemingly unconscious state and write an expression of love so beautiful that it would bring
