“I’m looking through a window,

watching things unfold,

I’m knocking on it loudly,

but I am just ignored.”



I believe that poetry is the road that leads me to my soul. I began writing poetry in fourth grade and have been writing it ever since. It started off with a small poem about an island paradise I wanted to be in. While it wasn’t exactly the direct path to my soul that I would later discover, it was enough to let me know that there was something great about putting words together to make art.

I was in sixth grade when I first wrote a poem that would stick with me for my entire life. In a fit of fury with being treated as a child and not being able to truly have a say in things, I sat at my computer and began to type. Fingers barreling across the keyboard, I created a poem called “Window”. It conveyed my internal strife over my helplessness: would I stay behind a “window” all my life, only witnessing history and not making it? While the poem has long since disappeared in the files of a computer I replaced, two stanzas will forever linger in my heart.

When I write poetry and the words stream out of me, it’s like taking a test and not knowing the answer to a question, but afterwards looking at the answer in a book. I might not be able to understand what my emotions tell me, but the fog of uncertainty lifts as I begin to write poetry. Poetry offers me as clearer view of my soul: my true self composed of nothing but emotion and reason. Behind a blinding veil, my soul holds no secrets. Poetry cuts this veil little by little.

Before I wrote “Window”, I couldn’t comprehend why I would feel so irritable when my parents would discuss politics or other “adult matters”. After I wrote it, it was like putting on a pair of glasses and being able to see the world more clearly. I gawked at the meaning the words suddenly meant to me. I had a fear of isolation and silence that I couldn’t seem to recognize, but writing the poem was like defining the fear itself. I never want to be behind a “window”.

Poetry is an incredibly private matter. Most people come home from a bad day and take a nap, shoot hoops, go for a run, blast their iPods at deafening volumes, or play video games. I come home from a bad day and write poetry. That is what I love so much about the art of poetic writing: I don’t hide from my emotions, I directly confront them. With poetry, I can actually decipher what is eating away at the inner workings of my heart, mind, and soul. It’s not always a painless matter; quite the opposite, it can evoke incredibly powerful emotions sensitive to the topic that is being written about. It can be so hard to share these emotions with people I know, for these emotions are raw and unprotected. It’s like pouring out all of my heart and putting it on the line for people to judge.

I find myself on an online community dedicated to the arts a lot. It’s interesting how nerve-striking it can be to show my poetry to my family, but how easy it is to share it on the Internet with people I don’t really know. Only communities like these are a great way to improve writing skills in order to portray these raw and unprotected emotions better without much judgement.

I know that writing poetry isn’t exactly the most popular thing for teenage boys to do, but I really do believe it makes me stronger. When I tackle these emotions I am faced with and work with them to create art, I come to better understand who I really am. Poetry isn’t just rhyming words that sound nice together; it is a journey that ends in truth.

“I’m dying by the window,

never got to help a soul.

No, I never helped the world

grow from many to a whole.”