I was nine when the towers came down in New York City. I can still remember my mom picking me up early from school, the same as a lot of kids. I remember worrying that my dad, who traveled a lot at the time, was on one of the planes. Beyond that, I really didn’t understand.
On January 6th, 2021, I was working, keeping half an eye on the Georgia senate election results. I would refresh the PBS NewsHour page every 30 or so minutes to check the live election map for updates. Then the results vanished, replaced by reports of a growing crowd around the Capitol Building.
I remember sitting with my parents that night, watching the news, and, like on September 11th, I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand how this could be happening. Supporters of the President of the United States of America were storming the U.S. Capitol Building to stop the counting of ballots in an election. Lawmakers were rushed out of their respective chambers for their own safety. All while the president himself did nothing.
That night, I knew I needed to write something. It took me a few drafts before I settled on Stand for Our Foundation. I wanted to speak to how fragile our system is. How delicate. How it only works if we all work together, something many in our nation have struggled with over the past several years.
We must stand together as one. If we allow our country to be poisoned by lies from within, it stands as much chance as the towers did. And we cannot let it fall.
Back in the end of 2020, I had a remote writing workshop in which I was to listen to other people and engage them without changing the topic of conversation to ourselves. The point was to show everyone that no matter how insignificant they thought their stories were, that other people would care about them. That’s something I myself struggle with, and the view counters I have for my website don’t help.
I’ve never been good at listening and thinking at the same time. In class, I could either take notes, or try thinking about what was being said. The former ensured that I had the notes to refer to later and that I would pay attention. The latter guaranteed I would end up zoning out and miss everything. So I took notes, paid complete attention, and didn’t think about anything being said.
This workshop took me by surprise. I struggled through it, and began to wonder if there was something wrong with me. Of course, this was 2020, and I hadn’t seen many people all year, so I was out of practice with… being a person. After messaging with a friend of mine, I found myself constantly wanting to steer the conversation toward myself. I realized then that I do that to show I understand what someone’s saying. I don’t mean to steal the spotlight, only to show that I’m listening and that I understand.
After that conversation, I wrote Showing I Care to express how I felt. Sometimes I feel like it’s hard to be a person, but I know the people about whom I care will understand that. So I’ll keep trying, so they know I care.
Many nights as I drift off to sleep, my mind runs away with itself. I think of all the things that could go wrong. All the ways that the fragile house of cards that is my life could tumble to the ground. It doesn’t matter how irrational all these thoughts are. They invade my mind, and I can’t get rid of them.
I didn’t know I had anxiety for most of my life. It wasn’t until I was reading stories from people with anxiety describing what it was like and how they felt that I realized that it described me perfectly. I knew I was jumpy and depressed, but I thought that’s all it was. I didn’t realize it meant something.
As I began writing poetry, I decided I wanted to write something about anxiety, about how it made me feel. As I thought about it, I got a sense for how I wanted it to sound. I wanted it to be fast-paced, to relay how it felt in the way the poem sounded.
I wrote a few drafts of Anxiety before settling on the final draft. Very few lines end the statement or sentence, unlike most of my other poems that have more natural line breaks. This gave it a faster pace, which is how I always read it.
I liked how it turned out in the end. Not only the faster pace, but the fear and desperation, both of which set it apart from most of my other poems. It shows that sometimes, things can be bad, but that’s okay. It’s important that the people we care about know that we’re not okay all the time. For everyone reading my poems, I feel it’s important that people know that they can be happy despite suffering. While Anxiety doesn’t show that on its own, its place among my poems does.
Crest #8: Light. I had the title in my head long before I started writing the poem. With it, I had some idea about what I wanted to write. After knowledge, sincerity, and reliability, I had one that spoke to me personally. In my life, I stare into the dark, wondering what happened to the light. That’s where I started.
I called up thoughts of hopelessness, those times when it was easier to let depression win. I thought about what I’d want to say to someone like that, someone like me, someone who thinks there’s nothing left.
There’s always a spark of light. Some piece of hope to guide us out of the dark. Something to live for, something to keep us moving forward. Those small memories that get buried under an avalanche of regret. It’s there, hiding in the dark. You just have to find it.
And so I wrote Find the Light, the last of the eight crest poems. It started with a poem about hope, and ended with a poem about the light. The things that keep us moving forward, no matter how bad things look. And things have been looking pretty bad. As we move out of the dark and back into the light, it’s important to look for the small sparks that help others move forward.
I have trust issues. I like to believe the best in people, but I don’t like having to rely on anyone too much. In my head, that’s how people let you down. If you want something done your way, you have to do it.
But what if I can’t do it? It isn’t feasible to do everything alone. Therefore, at some point, I’ll have to rely on someone else to do the job. What about the people in whom I’m putting my trust? Do they understand the burden?
I wrote Some Reliability to convey these ideas. To talk about the burden of trust that people put in us. If we don’t do our jobs right, if they can’t rely on us, then everything breaks down. We’ve got to operate reliably. If no one can rely on anyone else, what are we left with? Chaos.
With knowledge written, I was down to three more crests: sincerity, reliability, and light. I had already decided I wanted to save light for last, so I started working on sincerity and reliability. After trying and failing to come up with anything for reliability, I looked at sincerity.
For this one, I thought about lying. As a parent, I try to encourage my son to always be honest, even though I know I’m not always honest. Where should we draw the line? When does a small lie grow too big? When is it okay to lie?
That’s where I started on How Sincere is Sincerity?. With the line “Sometimes, it’s okay to lie”. Because it is. But if lies are used to much, they grow too big, and then it’s not okay. That’s when you should be honest.
Especially in a world where it’s easy to say something untrue and get away with it, it’s important, now more than ever, to teach our children when it’s okay to lie, and when they have to be honest.
I’ve always been considered one of the smart kids. I’ve always wanted to know more, and I believe that information should be free. At the same time, I can understand the appeal of ignorance. Especially when I see people deny the reality of the thing, because it’s too hard to face it.
I used to think that if I found the right argument, people would listen. Maybe that’s true, but not everyone wants to listen. It’s easier to think that your world works the way you think it does. When someone comes along and challenges that, it’s frightening.
When I started on the crest poem for knowledge, I tried to put these thoughts into words. It took several tries as I tried to understand what it was I was trying to say. Did I want to talk about information being freely available? Did I want to talk about the burden of people asking you “what’s the plan?” What was it I was trying to say?
In the end, I chose to talk about ignorance and knowledge. The dangers of too much knowledge, of telling people something they can’t handle. Wisdom and care must be used as well.
I put these thoughts into The Power of Knowledge. Knowledge gives you the key, but you still have to unlock the door and open it yourself. That’s its power.
When I was four years old, my family moved to a new house. A few houses up the street lived another boy about my age named Alex. We met not long after I moved there. We went to the same school and the same daycare. As the years went on, other friends came and went, but we stuck together.
Throughout that time, we were playing games with action figures, or spending days of our lives playing video games, or pretending we were astronauts exploring a new world. There were ups and downs, and we got into fights every now and then. We were both different from everyone else, but we found a place to belong with one another.
After high school, I went off to college out of town, while he stayed there. But we got together when I was home. The summer between my sophomore and junior years of college, we hung out every Wednesday. His mom, who considers me an additional son, made curry for the three of us and put on an old movie. We worked our way through Alfred Hitchcock, Casablanca, and any other movies she had.
When I wanted to write a poem about friendship, following the patternof the othercrest poems, there was no question what it was going to be about. I wrote about my friend Alex and all the times we’d spent together. That became Friendship Survives. After all this time, we’re still friends. I don’t get to see him as often as I’d like, but we get together every now and then. Because our friendship has survived.
Following Wings of Hope and Love Is…, I decided to do courage next. As I did with Love Is…, I started with “courage” and asked myself “What is courage?”. The phrase “The ability to act in spite of fear” came to mind, but in my life, fear is what keeps you safe.
That’s where I started. I reflected back on my life and asked “Why am I so afraid all the time? How many times have I been held back by fear?” The answer is “a lot”. As I reflected on these times, I began to write about them. The times I’ve wanted to thank someone. When I see someone doing something nice, I freeze up when I want to say “thank you”. What was there to be afraid of?
Fear and anxiety tells me everything that could go wrong. They tell me all the horrible things people could do. They tell me all the reasons not to trust people. Is courage not feeling that?
In the end, I settled on what I thought courage was. As I wrote in The Equation of Courage and Fear, it wasn’t the lack of fear. It was standing up to fear and telling it “no”. In my life, that’s one of the hardest things for me to do. One day, I hope I can stand up to it.
Following Wings of Hope, and being a huge Digimon fan, I got the idea to write a series of eight poems, each with a theme from one of the eight crests. Number one was hope, held by my favorite of the eight main characters. After that, I decided to do love.
I sat down in my room one morning with the theme of “love” in my head and nothing else. And I began to write. I wrote about the love I’ve seen in my life. The love shared by all of the odd couples I know. The love of two people living far away. The love of parenting, and of accepting people for who they are.
The person “saying yes instead of no” was me a long time ago, when I adopted my dog. When my friends asked me, I was prepared to say “no”, because I didn’t think I could handle it. But when I got there, I said “yes”. Why? Love. And I haven’t regretted that decision once.
“Hundreds of questions before the sun comes up” is my son, and “hundreds” might be an understatement. But I listen to them because I love him.
When I needed a title, I settled on Love Is…, because that was what the poem was about. What love is. What it looks like. And who shares it.