At the age of Eight I wrote my first real poem,
I mean something I am actually still proud of.
Not too long ago I found that yellowed,
crinkled piece of paper hiding in my closet.
Doodles of birds in the margins, erasure lines
noted at each misspelling or incorrect usage of a word.
I think back to what a simple time that was for me,
words just flowing on to paper without worry or care
who might read them or critique it.
I remember that it all started with the doodles in the margins,
how one small stroke of a pencil guided me to write about
the flying sea gulls I saw at the beach that summer.
Beautiful Simplicity.
At the age of Sixteen I shrugged off my writers block.
You know the kind of writers block that sports and being a kid causes.
I churned out piece after piece of darkness
to fill the pages of my marbled note book.
Scribbles, scratches, and scripted speculation
of the worlds problems...and mine.
I thought I knew it all back then.
In reality, I did.
I saw without blinders, or distractions of
the everyday monotony of life after education.
Beautiful Anonymity.
At the age of Eighteen I began to further my education.
That wonderful monkey-on-the-back most high school seniors call 'College'.
I delved into books I had never begun to imagine.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Roughing It by Mark Twain...
They filled my mind with wonderful and scary images.
Then I found my aged copies of The Lord of The Rings trilogy
and my mind ran ablaze with Orcs, Elves, and Hobbits.
I found my love of fantasy in those volumes of language
that Mr. Tolkien created as a bed time story for his son.
That year of my life is a bit of a blur, or a bit hidden
in the recesses of my mind anymore. I'm telling you
of the good parts because they make the story interesting.
There were "incidents" that to this day stain my memory.
My first time being truly intoxicated, My first interesting
relationship with a woman (the puppy love years behind me),
Dealing with emotional and physical trauma.
'They' are truly right, "that which does not kill you,
only makes your stronger."
Beautiful Agony
At the age of twenty three I set out on an adventure.
Texas was the destination, and my life would never be the same.
I spent hours in a car just driving and listening to music.
Do you know how wonderfully free that is?
Made a pit stop in Pensacola Florida, relaxed for a week
just being a big kid again. After that I stopped in New Orleans,
pre-katrina, what a beautiful city of insanity.
It is an absolute melting pot, or was before the devastation
and rape of that area of the United states.
Finally ended up in Houston Texas. Met up with a friend,
tried to find a job, goofed off for six months when there
was no work to be found, and got the heck out of dodge.
Beautiful Recovery
At the age of Twenty Seven(this year anyway) I am happily engaged.
The rest of my life ahead of me, loving and hating every minute.
The love part is easy to explain. Every day I wake up next to
the woman I love, in a house that we own, and I have to smile.
The hate part, well that is not so simple.
I hate that sometimes I struggle providing for us, but that is
more of a personal thing for me because I am hard headed.
I hate when something so easy to do evades explanation to most,
and I have to pick up their broken pieces to finish the job.
Life was so much simpler a few years ago, writing about sea gulls
and the darkness that surrounded my teenage angst.
Now that the reality is harder to absorb than the fantasy I
create in my everyday life, I look to the future.
Will my children be so blessed to have the opportunities
I was afforded by my family, or is it all just a dream?
Beautiful life.
It is always just 'Me' between the double lines.
Stuck at a question, just wondering about the answer.
© Justin Frieberg, All rights reserved
