Depressed mental wanderings

Poetry has always been my downfall; I can never write what I feel to be "good" poetry without feeling soiled, as though I'm shoving meaning artificially into each stanza.  My English teachers tell me I'm crazy, so maybe I was doing it right to start out with, but eventually I wrote a poem I finally felt good about.  It was for my mother's birthday, and I just through inhibitions to the winds and tried not so much to write as to flow, letting the words pass naturally from brain to hand to pencil to paper and, eventually, to Microsoft Office 2003 Word.  I was so proud of myself; it'd felt good, I hadn't so much as capitalized a single motif or emphasized a single theme, and I felt refreshed.  Finally, I'd written poetry.  Or so I thought. 

When my mother finally read it, she sat me down and said, "It's a beautifully written poem..."  I was prepared to offer my ever-modest denials, prepared to mutter how it wasn't anything at all and I hoped she'd had a really enjoyable birthday, when she dropped the bombshell: "But what does it mean?" 

I can't remember giving her a coherent answer.  I was stunned, speechless, incredulous.  Mean?  It had to mean something?  My writing philosophy, already messed up before, was thrown into even greater turmoil.  I couldn't believe it.  Here I had fought to write a completely natural-feeling poem without strenuously laboring to forcibly inject meaning into a poem, and I was asked, "But what does it mean?" 

A year later, I'm still recovering, much to the detriment of my AP English classwork.  Back in elementary and middle school, I'd had it all figured out.  But, just as many high schoolers seemed to find their written voice, I'd lost mine.  I'm still reevaluating how I analyze literature and poetry, and still haven't figured out how to write them to my satisfaction (teachers still tell me I write well, which is something). 

Anyway, this all comes up because I wrote a poem tonight.  I'm not sure why, I have tons of homework I could--make that should--be doing.  Maybe it was hormones.  Maybe it was the depressing yet inspiring tones of Rob Dougan pumping out of my computer speakers.  I don't know, but I feel it encompasses, well, how I feel.  About life.  About how it happens.  About how it happens to me. 

Call me depressed, disturbed, whatever.  I've found I'm always attracted to darker, more melodic tunes, especially movie and video game soundtracks by the like of Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard, and Clint Mansell.  And as I've progressed through teenage puberty, depression (or hormones or whatever it is) is increasingly becoming a major part of my life.  That sounds ominous, and it shouldn't; I just mean that, more and more, I'm stopping before I fall asleep to contemplate how little I've done, how little I can do, and the chances of being able to achieve even that.  Being a novice at relationships probably doesn't help, and I've been forced at times to suppress this "depression" in favor of buckling down to schoolwork, which I'm sure makes me more irritable.  Anyway, enough psychoanalyzing; here's "Alone" (I couldn't come up with a better title):

Alone


Yell down the hall

And 'cross the glade,

Yet the anguish within

Refuses to fade.

‘Tis my lot to cry,

My lot to die

In the pouring rain, alone.

What humanity is this, that

Holds the scissors, though

The line is young and ripe?

Through man’s eyes the child saw

And could not comprehend,

His whimpers lost in the wind.

 - ManEatingBadger -