10 Things Christians Have Said to Me About Being Gay

This sums up my coming out experience in high school in 10 quotes. I plan on sharing some of those stories more in depth.

Soul Sharing: I'm not straight, but I'm also not gay

So yeah, this poem is basically my way of coming out as asexual after having already been out as gay. Not much more to say about that, so here's my coming out video.

Coming out as Pan-kAce (Panromantic-Asexual)

(pronounced "pancake")

Words: the super power we all have but can't control

#GogglesAreCool origins revealed

My Quicksilver (Evan Peters) cosplay

Quick exercise and talk on the power of words

7 seconds of me non-stop cursing blooper

Poetry Performance: "What the F*ck is sex?"

Therapy Tactics: Understanding Poetry and Therapy

So the straightforward theme that can be talked about in "Apathetic Artist" is cutting or self-harming. But as I revealed in the Soul section and my video post, the more subtle maybe even invisible theme of the poem for me is being polar. A mental illness that's invisible to everyone else, in my case at least since I've always had to hide my real emotions for other reasons which I'll talk about through other poems. So poems like this one made it possible for me to write down how I felt about deep personal shit that I wasn't ready or wiling to openly share with anyone because I didn't want to be seen as damaged or broken even if that's how I felt. But I can post my poems on Facebook and have my friends "like" it and comment on it. I can share the emotion without sharing the specifics.

Well, it's always a challenge trying to think of the best way to start about talking about a single issue of mine since I'm so complicated with so many issues that overlap and intertwine. I've been through so much in such a short amount of time. I'm only 21 so it's been a whole decade since my problems manifested in a significant life changing way. It's taken me some time to look back and see what was cause and effect and what was independently compacting my problems. So I'll try my best to focus on my bipolar issues for this post. Like I said in the last post, I knew something was wrong with me mentally when I was 15.

Coming Out as Bipolar

Soul Sharing: I'm Bipolar

For the Soul section, I'll walk through the poem line by line or stanza by stanza and explain why I wrote it. I'll talk about word selection, inspiration, multiple meanings, and where I placed a part of my soul in the piece. Let's begin.

"Apathetic Artist" 

First off, the tittle is alliterative which is one of my favorite and one of the easiest and most recognized poetic devices. You are going to see this a lot from me. For me, the title is usually a brief summary or my favorite line of the poem. A lot of times the title is the last thing and sometimes even the hardest part to write. This one came pretty naturally combing the first line and the theme of the poem.  And this is the first poem in my book of poetry because it embodies the theme and inspired the title of the book. (Spoilers!)

Bonus Art Tip: The Wright Way to Count Meter Like the Tone Deaf First Grader that I am

Artistic Tips: Meter and Other Basic Structures of Poetry

I picked this as my first poem to go through its PAST (Poetry, Art, Soul, and Therapy) because it is one of my poems that I spent the most time on the technical art aspect that also touches deeply to my soul and is a great segue into poetry as therapy. "Apathetic Artist" is written in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, but not really. Allow me to break that down. A sonnet is simply a 14 lined poem. Traditionally there are two main styles of sonnets: Shakespearean or English and Petrarchan or Italian. The Shakespearean sonnet is the more famous one, at least in English and American poetry. The main difference between the two is the rhyme scheme or the pattern of which lines rhyme with each other. That's the easy part. Anyone can do that. I did that here. It's made up of three quatrains of an ABAB rhyme scheme and ends with a couplet or a pair of rhyming lines. The tricky part is that, like with most of Shakespeare's work, it's written in iambic pentameter. Not everyone can do that. I didn't do that. I just wrote it, and it more closely fit a dactyl rhythm so I just went with that as best as I could and even threw in some curve ball anapests because why not.


Now you can skip down to the glossary section at the end of this post to read the definition of all those poetic terms that I italicized for you, but I'll just give you a quick crash course on feet and meter that I learned in my poetry classes for my Literate Minor. Let's step back so we can zoom in.

Bonus Monday Video! "About the Poet"

Poetry: "Apathetic Artist"

Please read the poem on your own before watching me perform it. I think it's important for you to form your own uninfluenced interpretation of the poem.

"Apathetic Artist"
by David Wright

I’m an artist without a muse,

A poet not in pain.

Happiness makes me confused.

Summer is really lame.

Neither here nor there,

I sit in silence until a friend calls.

Apathy arrives and I don’t care.

Then I wake up and notice that now it’s fall.

Surrounded by stimuli I react with body and brain,

But my soul and heart still wander for meaning.

Chemical and emotional reaction reign.

Winter comes crawling in, clotting the bleeding. 

Pulsing in pain from the incredible loss. Apathetic.

I don’t care. The medication haze hides life’s aesthetic.

The Wright Way of Writing

This blog is dedicated to serve as a crash course tutorial on how anyone can use poetry as an artistic and therapeutic expression of the soul. Poetry has been my therapy in dealing with everything from bad breakups to dark depression to identity issues. You don't always want to talk about things with a therapist or sometimes even your closest friend, but it isn't healthy to let some things stay bottled up inside of you. When you take the time to sit down and write down your feelings, you force yourself to actually process your emotions and put concrete words to those elusive feelings. Something I did learn in therapy is mindfulness. There's so much power and control of stopping to say, "Hey, I am angry, and this is why, and it's ok," or "Hey, I am angry, but I don't really have a good reason to be angry. I should stop being angry." And then you can take those words and rearranging them and create something beautiful. You never have to share it with anyone if you don't want to. There are plenty of poems I may never publish. But you can still go back and read your art from years ago and reconnect with yourself and see how much has changed, for better or worse, or maybe nothing has really changed at all. It's like your own personal emotional time capsule.