There are no experts in the world of expression.

We all read and interpret for different reasons.  As observers we challenge with opinion and gain knowledge by offering knowledge but we can’t critique someone’s heart even if the emotions are misspelled.  I once found myself endlessly free writing in my freshman year writing class.  My TA was a woman in your mid twenties, a very enthusiastic scholar type who gave us the exercise about writing about a moment in time.  She offered us to take ten minutes to write whatever came to mind however we wanted to write it so I took my mind on a mental voyage to a summer barbeque in the back yard in a neighborhood I once lived.  I was able to capture the atmosphere as though I was actually there from the buzzing of the bees to the charcoal aroma of hamburgers and hot dogs sizzling on an eighty-five degree day.  For those ten minutes I was a young teenager again sitting around watching the grown folks play spades and sing along to Al Green.  But my vision inside this time capsule was the presence of the older man who sat alone across the street watching us.  My free write became more about my observance of him and how our day of joy was viewed through his eyes.  He began to take control of my pen and when that enthusiastic TA said “Time is up”; I realized I ended with a different journey than I began.  I honestly thought I wrote a piece of crap.

When we live the moment, we are our own worse critics.

The next class a few days later, our TA instructed us to take that free write and write from another perspective.  I wasn’t too fond of what was written but it gave me the opportunity to put my mind inside the mind of that older man watching us.  He became my voice and I captured his loneliness in watching his surroundings.  Through his eyes was a vision of change.  Things were different than when he was young.  He remembered a time when the sounds of fireworks were actually sounds of delight and not the sound of gunshots.  He remembered when there was a respect for elders; a respect he recognized again in watching the young boy who was me.  Again, I didn’t think I wrote anything great until the TA called me into her office one afternoon with a smile ear to ear.  She wanted to ask my permission to use my piece for her dissertation.  Her vision of the story was that I was connecting generations by becoming this man and what he was actually watching was his history as in my original piece I was looking into my future.  Towards the end of the story I had the young boy crossing the street to ask the older man to join them.  She evaluated this as a merging of generations.  She found genius in something someone else may have read as just a story about a barbecue.  What impressed me more was she took the time to understand and appreciate the emotion and never once tried to correct my heart.

Critique is the journey of interpretation not its destination.

© 2010

Tarringo T. Vaughan

Public Journal

My expression has been copyrighted by time.

 
The greatest struggle I’ve had to face in my life has been finding a way to explore the many techniques of my own mind.  I have visions no one else has but yet perhaps share in a different unique interpretation.  And that’s what we are as poets:  interpretations seeking new outlets to solve the emotional puzzle of what’s written inside.  We create our own language poetically to be translated as an inspirational dialect spoken by many and understood by those who connect on a deeper value.  We are the thrill seekers, the lovers, the depressed and the challenged but we also are dare devils launching words into atmospheres of new perspectives and old perspectives not ready for change.  And this is where I admit that I had a sickness.  I had an illness I didn’t think there was a cure for until I found a new medicine called literature.  It was injected into my blood and ink poured out in great depth and I myself became one of these interpretations.

Fate is the great editor of transgression.

There was a revival within my own mind that released thoughts as lessons and ideas as new ways of healing.  There new feelings reeling through the printing press of my heart therefore publishing different emotions edited by definition.  I went from struggling with expression to manufacturing stanzas of relevance by being a witness to the publications of life known as Hughes, Plath, Milton, Rosetti, Black and Whitman.  They produced so many stanzas of time and discovery and so many metaphors of simply living with a new pulse known as words.  They were the doctors who cured my silence.  And now as I look out into the night I see the stars twinkling in a dark sky waiting for the sunset of a new day.  I see trees ready to be written and Rose bulbs ready to burst into the blossom of new poems.  And I see the reflection of the cover revealing my own book of life.  There are thirty-four chapters so far and many pages structured into the manuscript of a man who will linger into the archives of tomorrow.  My words will be the footprints left on the mind of my readers and future generations.  My words, our words will be the palpitations that will keep us alive forever.

Life has published my soul.

An open window

halfway shut keeps me optimistic that everything around me will make sense…eventually.  The air escapes inside and the sweat on my fingertips shiver with heated anticipation.  And I write to find truth; to find the answers of hidden questions within my own mind.  I write in Bold to express tears of laughter that cover up a pain that have bullied me for years.  But now I’m fighting back with underlined run-on sentences of a built up strength only paused by a comma (,).  Traffic noise argues with my thoughts…temporarily.  And I write again.  There’s a lot of bullshit in this world, it’s usually the bullshit I misspell…on purpose.  Lies challenging every moment I think is honest; exclamation points (!) non-expressive to the heart.

I search for truth in strange places.

A trash can…

sitting empty in the corner of my room is filled with cluttered confusion.  A stench lingers out and blends with the oxygen I need to think.  Time can be waste and so can life when we fail to understand the little things that we are quick to throw away.  Like a half written stanza on a torn piece of paper.  It deserved to grow but now it makes it home in that trash can of incompleteness.  And I write.  To unravel thoughts into something more clear but the only clarity is within the chaotic streaming of consciousness in what we believe to be truth.

I find truth in strange places.

© 2010

Tarringo T. Vaughan

And the world can be a fucked up place to be.  But do I pay attention more because I’m a writer?  As I look out the window I see the moon shining like the glow of a halogen lamp as it stands alone surrounded by stars that sparkle like the glitter on a Michael Jackson jacket.  It’s natural to see beyond the curtains of my reality out a window that connects me to the simple pleasures of the eye.

Wait…let me write that down

So they say life can be a bitch or is a bitch depending on where you’re at in life.  I think it’s more of a stage where we perform until the curtain falls.  We exists to encounter problems, we glow to encounter new problems that help us either fall or rise again depending on how much strength we gained from the previous problem.  And then there are those damn metaphors.  Those comparisons that give us a clearer glimpse into what something is like or about.

The other day I was as cold as ice.

My heart that is (as I was angry at a few situations that caused me to shut myself off towards emotions).   Being cold as ice could’ve meant temperature but now that I told you it was a coldness involving the emotion of anger, you know how fucking mad I really was.  Slyvia Plath loved metaphors as many poets and writers do.  They help the transition of our ideas and gives purpose to our description of aspects of life such as those problems and life being a bitch.  I personally do enjoy the usage of metaphors because I see them daily even when simply looking out my window.  I see them driving, conversing in crowds, jogging through parks, barking at strangers walking past and sitting on park benches.  They are all around me and as a writer of poetry I just inhale their presence.

M E T A P H O R S are the distractions and attractions

That inspire.

I have an appetite for success.

And I will feed starving thoughts.

I do a lot of thinking without opening the mouth of my ambition and making the moves necessary to fatten everything I can be.  There is a hesitation to put myself out there and instead there are times I stand in the soup lines waiting for someone to feel my bowl with what I need.  But I realized that too much sodium of dependence would have me waiting forever and it was up to me to create my own gravy.  Life isn’t meant to be a plate of fluffy smashed potatoes but it sure tastes good when you know you have given your all to succeeding.  I still hear the rumbles, I still have the hunger pains but without them I wouldn’t be living and achieving and have that determination to go even further.

A hungry mind is an accomplished passion to achieve.

© 2010

Tarringo T. Vaughan

Public Journal