We've all got a little Emily Dickinson in us

Let's admit it. Love brings out the emotions in us and in search of how to put our feelings on paper we end up with something called 'poetry.' Rhyme or no rhyme, the short lines and vague ideas are very convenient for those of us with so much inside and only so many ways to describe it.

"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.

Even in highschool there was something about Dickinson that entranced me. Her words, never quite making sense, and those hyphens... never used before in poetry as means of punctuation. Her famous peculiarities are something I could never get enough of. I wrote high school papers on her life, I wrote college papers on her life and I made a pretty awesome collage as a representation of one of her poems for extra credit. The way that her poetry could be read at one time and make sense to my mind and then I would read it a few months later and it was all baffling. Such a mind teaser. The words and their meanings just at the tip of your mind.

I remember dissecting one of her poems on such a occasion that we were doing a poetry section in my lit class and none of the other poems really meant much to me so I took each word, each hyphen, and figured it out like a complicated math problem. Only, the true miracle of this math problem was there was no right answer. English is like that. Forgiving, so long as you can explain yourself. And with a five page requirement, there was plenty of room to do some explaining. Looking back, I can't even explain how I did it. There's no way I could do it again.

I never thought poetry as a means of communication for normal people. I always thought it was the walking dictionaries and the early century literature lovers who appreciated such frail things such as poems. Words that can have so many meanings and are like a complicated puzzle to figure out. The tool of patience needed to figure them out, which seems to be in short supply these days, especially among the young people who want answers now and don't want to work for their answers but want them given to them.

A confession, I have books upon books of poetry. Poetry that I have written when pining for that one boy to notice me in the hall. Poetry written when loneliness could have split me apart. Poetry written when I thought of others, especially memories. Poetry written when I couldn't get enough of a certain someone's smile. Poetry written when I just needed a good brain exercise and my fingers itched to flip through a thesaurus. Books of it. Notebooks full of sappy and emotional messages. A three-inch binder full of poetry formed from loose-leaf pieces of paper borrowed from the back of my social studies and health dividers back in the day of high school. It's disgusting. Most of it not really that good. All of it holding memories of my life. But I won't lie, there's some good stuff in there, too. I mean, I didn't win a newspaper poetry contest for nothing. But like I said, a lot of it is just trash with too much sentimental value to dump.

Imagine my surprise when I popped on facebook last week and found that my bulldozing people down with helmets and pads over a leather bound ball brother, the same one that can get 2 tickets and total a car in the same week brother, had a little bit of a heart and had written a poem. And had posted it as his status. And that it actually wasn't lame. It was actually kind of peculiar, and it made you wonder just what was going on to make him write it. Who knew he could write more than his name? Not that he can't write more and be more and is more than a beast... the kid just doesn't use his potential in the way that some people I know would like him to. Football is life, and if life is not football than it is wrestling. The kid lives to beat people up. But under all of that, what do you know? He's got some feelings that can only be expressed in poetry and he did his best to get them out. I was so proud of him! Guess I wasn't the only one who scribbled my thoughts down in dozens of notebooks, searching for just the right word to describe what was going on instead of using three.