Black Seeds

I know someone. He is not powerful, though many mistake him to be. Some believe he is angry and passionate, loud and unforgiving. But I know better - he is sad. So sad that he is reduced to nothing. He walks through life in a foggy haze, overcome with quiet grief. He floats in and out of my work. He is present in all of my poems. He is subtle and understated. He is within me. He manipulates me: the way my mind works. He tricks me and with his fingers, moves me to tears like a marionette. He does not mean to be cruel, but it is in his blood, pumping and coursing through his veins. He is lonely. He is consumed with thought, and thus his depth becomes cumbersome. He is precise. He is paralyzed. He is intense and irrational. He is a wasteland - uninspired and empty. He is hopeless. He is always there. Looming, like a dark shadow. In fact, he is a shadow, a deep shade of gray. He is not a real person. Though he is more human than some, he is not alive. He never was. No, he is a color. He is a personification. He is my personification of the color black.

The next two poems Black Seeds and Blackberry Jam follow a similar vein - sharing the color "black" in their titles and themes. Both come from a dark place - one of insecurity and vulnerability, one of self-loathing; a place that I often visit and re-visit when I am inspired to write. Black Seeds blatantly revels in such thoughts. But Blackberry Jam, despite colorful imagery, also derives from blackened sentiments. As the old adage goes, some things are not as [happy as] they seem.

Both of these poems were written at the Stanford Creative Writing Discovery Institute the summer before my Senior year of high school. Let's get emotional.
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Black Seeds

Look at the town inside of me
What is seen?

Boney spine
Itchy eyes

Every imperfection
Shining, reflecting - into the glass

I miss you
The smell of  pine trees and hazy ash

Sprinkled on your pale skin
Goose bumps rising

Happy glory gone - over the bridge between us
That very blackness soiling our cheery mood