this one is untitled, which is astoundingly rare to me and suggests i never actually got it to a point where i considered it finished, or finished enough to be canonical. it’s got a couple of things going for it – it’s a metapoem, which definitely became a big part of my writing around this time. or, at the very least, a thing that i was very willing to play with. it’s also a love poem, a sickeningly sweet vomit of my emotional immaturity cum hopeless romanticism. it’s short, it’s untitled, and for whatever reason, i still think it’s worth clinging to.

this piece i still rather enjoy. it’s quick. not just short, it has a fast pace to it, and i’m happy that i was able to control that. it’s just kind of silly and playful, in contrast to a lot of my work. but it’s also rather cynical, i suppose, and that’s very much me. it’s sort of about love, but not in my typical grasping, emotionally immature voice. i guess because it’s about failure. and to me, finding success in love is rather unrealistic, and my more ‘romantic’ pieces are thus quite fantasies. this is also a metapoem, although that’s less the point of it than many of my pieces from the time. but it is unavoidably aware of itself, wrapped up nicely at the end. though it’s more playful than i can imagine myself being right now, i’m still pleased with this older piece.

this is another old piece that hasn’t aged particularly well in my mind, but one that i’m still mostly comfortable hanging on to. the gimmick of the words elongated by the triple ‘e’s shows an embarrassing immaturity and lack of restraint. the images make no sense together. but it was well received by my peers at the time, for whatever reason, and i think it probably marks the start of a few recurring themes for me&hellips; it’s not confessional per se, but it is approaching that more than my previous work had. it’s also one of my first metapoems, a theme that continues to play out at times when writing occupies my mind more than most things, and therefore starts to also occupy my writing more than&hellips; well, more than makes sense. it’s also one of my earlier pieces to really play with the title instead of just slapping something on.