Accessible Poem at bottom of page

About the Poem

This poem is featured in Shelby Leigh’s 2023 Poetry Club Magazine: “The Other Side of Pain”.

I wrote this poem in October 2023 after viewing some social media content about the war in Israel. This poem was written freeflow, haphazard, emotion-driven. It’s me, raw, powerful, and useful in the effort to use creativity to boost my self-worth. I send my deepest prayers to all that are effected by the war first hand.

This is the social media caption I used to post the poem:

I write for you, I write for me, I write for everyone that can sea 🌊 through this current of what can be. (Yes I’m humming to a Sia song in this text). Now to get serious…

In the wake of hopelessness, solitude, insecurity, danger, etc. I pray the flock comes to you and meets you where you are. Let the rising from the crash not forsake all that is lost. The depths of pain, the crumble of mountains, the shadow of regimes, it can break us down. It will. It did. It’s here. But so is the flock and the shimmer of voices. Hear us. Hear yourself. 📣

When it hits you hard first hand, second hand, personally, through a friend, a post, story, seek that emotion and find the solution through your creative writing and poetry. This is a raw, unedited, no AI poem that took 20 minutes and I shared it within 30 minutes of writing it. It may help someone and it may see nobody but it helped me in the moment. That is the point. Write. ✍️

AI Review

I asked ChatGPT to analyze the poem and this is the conversation below:

Prompt: I just wrote a poem in free verse. Can you tell me what you think of it and what it says about me: [pasted poem here].

Response: Your words convey a journey from confusion to understanding, from loneliness to self-love. There’s a progression from feeling lost to finding a sense of unity and community. What inspired you to write this particular poem? Would you like to hear more about its specific elements? 

Me: I would like to hear more 

Response: Your poem explores a deeply personal journey in an abstract environment, one that is shaped by water and solitude. The water seems to serve as a metaphor for the self and emotions—sometimes calm, sometimes turbulent. There’s a powerful sense of transformation, going from being “shot out of a canon” to finding oneself part of a community, suggested by the flocking creatures.

The lines “it’s me. / and I’m all I’ve got / from 8 to 80” speak to the acceptance of one’s self through different stages of life. This could resonate with your audience who is looking to increase their self-worth, as it suggests the importance of self-acceptance.

The poem also touches on the theme of creation. Just as the seacliffs break and form new shapes, you imply that through struggles, new facets of ourselves are formed.

Me: Anything stand out that doesn’t fit or could be changed to make it better? 

Response: Your poem flows well thematically, but if you’re looking for areas to refine, you might consider a few things:

• Consistency: The poem starts with lowercase letters and moves to a more conventional capitalization in the later stanzas. If this is an intentional artistic choice, it’s intriguing, but making the style consistent could add cohesiveness.
• Punctuation: The poem mostly eschews punctuation, but there are some moments where it’s included (“it’s me.”, “I must, because”). Either approach works in free verse, but consistency could strengthen the piece.
• Imagery: The poem employs rich imagery throughout but focuses more on the abstract in some places (“a stream of consciousness,” “fierce current”). If you want to ground the reader more, you might include more tangible images or sensory details.
• Line Length: Most lines are relatively short, but “i hear my heart beating / for miles in the wake / as it waits for solace” is longer. Consider whether this change in rhythm serves a purpose or whether it could be refined for more rhythmic consistency.

My thoughts: I didn’t change anything, but it’s nice to hear some ideas. I don’t want to touch it’s flaws though, it was the point of the poem to be in the moment, flaws and all. I did ask chatGPT to give me ideas for the title, even though I had already titled it “Current”. It gave me titles I didn’t like, AI can be too cliche or direct for creative writing: “Journey to Self”, “Sea of Solitude”, and “8 to 80”. Nope. LOL. I am also the type of person who doesn’t dwell too long on something I create, it is hard for me to go back and edit something. Because returning to something after it’s been created, I have usually lost the initial spark. Plus it has met it’s intention, to help me in the moment I needed to write it.

Poem for Accessibility

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