Nov 2019
my friend
she is in a contest
it stressed her out, this contest
i thought
“i would also like to be stressed out”
so i decided to enter myself into prose and poetry-
a contest where i have to make a poem
about me
by people who are not me
how is someone else supposed to know who i am
and perform a poem about them
but also about me
i am not naive enough to think that i am the only one in the world
with insomnia
or who likes oranges
and sketching
but i don’t want to walk into a room
stand at the podium
and speak about
other peoples ideas
that somehow relate to mine
i want to walk into a room
stand at a podium
and speak about me
i want the judge to know that my favourite colour used to be yellow
that my favourite book is winnie the pooh
i want the judge to know me
and not the poetry that is not positively about me
when i think about what to choose as my topic
“this is me” and “this speaks to me”
i find that the latter seems much more
compelling
so much easier
i don’t know how i’m supposed to start the first topic
because i can’t seem to strip myself of everything that makes me up
into a simple matter
i watch girls make poems that move mountains
and i listen to them
because they are beautiful
but if you read a poem about being anorexic
people will only know you as the anorexic girl
to walk into a room
“hello, my name is infinity, my topic is about how i’m an insomniac”
i immediately am telling every single judge
that they are allowed to remove everything about me
that i love
and turn me into
“infinity, number 513, the insomniac”
she is in a contest
it stressed her out, this contest
i thought
“i would also like to be stressed out”
so i decided to enter myself into prose and poetry-
a contest where i have to make a poem
about me
by people who are not me
how is someone else supposed to know who i am
and perform a poem about them
but also about me
i am not naive enough to think that i am the only one in the world
with insomnia
or who likes oranges
and sketching
but i don’t want to walk into a room
stand at the podium
and speak about
other peoples ideas
that somehow relate to mine
i want to walk into a room
stand at a podium
and speak about me
i want the judge to know that my favourite colour used to be yellow
that my favourite book is winnie the pooh
i want the judge to know me
and not the poetry that is not positively about me
when i think about what to choose as my topic
“this is me” and “this speaks to me”
i find that the latter seems much more
compelling
so much easier
i don’t know how i’m supposed to start the first topic
because i can’t seem to strip myself of everything that makes me up
into a simple matter
i watch girls make poems that move mountains
and i listen to them
because they are beautiful
but if you read a poem about being anorexic
people will only know you as the anorexic girl
to walk into a room
“hello, my name is infinity, my topic is about how i’m an insomniac”
i immediately am telling every single judge
that they are allowed to remove everything about me
that i love
and turn me into
“infinity, number 513, the insomniac”
i wrote this in about 5 minutes, and it is all true. my friends, bless their hearts, both made a poem about being bullied and being african american. "this is me" frustrates me to no end because no amount of poems that i find are going to describe who i am unless i only talk about generic stuff. and no one, ever, is generic. no one. my friends, my mom. me. we try, so hard, to shove ourselves into a box with a label and this contest doesn't encourage us to move outside of the box and our label, but continuously put more labels onto ourselves.
