"Tod"
This story doesn't actually have a title. I wrote it in one night, just for fun, staying up til the wee morning hours, I think during the summer of 2002. It's not a very realistic story - it's basically what comes of watching The Cider House Rules in the same day as the world gymnastics championships. I hope no one finds it offensive either, too light a take on a serious topic, since I don't pretend to know anything, in reality, about the situations I describe. I hope reading the story makes you feel good. Fun fact: Tod and Jade (from American Hot Chocolate) are connected, through a network of characters, by less than six degrees of separation.

The Harp
I almost forgot I'd written this story...not really even a story, more of an anecdote. I wrote it for a tenth grade assignment (1997) in which we had to choose a picture with a title and a caption, and turn it into a story. My picture (titled "The Harp"), showed a man and a dog in a beautiful field with a harp on a rock across a river, and had the caption "So it's true, he thought, it's really true." Actually, almost none of the story, except for the philosophical question at the end, is really original; ideas came from a book called The Littlest Angel that I'd read to my little brother years before, one of my sister's favorite movies called Chances Are, a dumb joke about some clams that I heard when I was seven years old...it goes on. Don't take anything it in too seriously - it's meant to be a lighter take on death, that will hopefully make you laugh a bit, and make you think a bit.

One time a glacier passed through here
Though this is a very simple poem, it's pretty special to me, because it was really the first poem that got me interested in writing poetry. The family that lived in my house before we did had horses, and they'd cleared a bunch of space to make a corral for them. I was leaning against the corral fence, looking at the few boulders still inside, and the title phrase just ran through my head, and I thought, hey, that was poetic!, and paced around outside the house for awhile and wrote the poem. That was the fall of my senior year of high school, 1998. And that's pretty much how it all began...

The Collectors
I wrote this poem for a tenth grade English class (1996). It's a pretty silly poem; mostly I was just playing with rhythm and rhyme. Hopefully it'll give you a laugh and a warm, happy feeling. =)

Sonnet of the Halloween Candy
I wrote this poem for the same tenth grade English project as The Collectors...before I understood that sonnets are supposed to be about serious, lofty topics. In case you're curious, the part about my brother eating my sister's Halloween candy really happened; the forgiveness part...well, of course it happened, but it wasn't quite so pretty as in the poem. ;)

High School
Wrote this one senior year of high school, 1998, upon hearing a teacher observe that most metaphors made just for the sake of making a metaphor are total bs.

Flight of a Dreamer
This poem also has a lot of both back-story and forward-story to it, and though I'm not really superstitious about it, I'm not going to share the personal story here, either. All I'll share is that I wrote it in the fall of my senior year of high school (1998), it's based on someone I love very much (though not a true story), and while I don't think it's my best poem, it's my favorite.

The Difference - 1998

Frills - 1998, also not an especially good poem...though the shape effect worked better than I thought it would in html.

"Ode to Master Robinton"
This poem is a response to the death scene of Master Robinton, one of the most endearing characters I've ever read of, in the book All the Weyrs of Pern, by Anne McCaffrey (one of the Dragonriders of Pern novels, my all-time favorite series. =D ). I think after I read the scene in the book I cried for about an hour, which, if you know me and my usual reaction to mushy stuff, should be quite impressive! =P

To Yiayia
This poem was for a high school (1999) English assignment - to write an ode to someone - but it became a bit more special than that. "Yiayia" is the Greek word for "Grandma," and the poem is about my grandmother's immigration from Cyprus to the United States. Of course, I can't begin to encompass her story in just a few words...and I'm sure that the story she told me couldn't begin to encompass the actual experience, either...but this poem is a taste of the respect and awe that I feel for my bubbly, loving Yiayia.

The wake is Sunday and the funeral is Monday.
This poem is about a childhood best friend of mine, a wonderful person named Desiree Butkowsky, or just Dez, for short, who died soon after our graduating class all departed for college. "The wake is Sunday and the funeral is Monday" was a sentence that a friend back at home spoke to me over the phone as she told me the news...the sentence echoed in my mind for awhile after. It seemed the most awful time possible for any of us to die - just as we all get to start exploring the world.

"Psalm"
I just kind of woke up one morning (Spring 2000), and wrote this.

Beach Cadence
I think that, literarily (if that's a word =P), this is my best poem. I wish I had a better name for it. I wrote it in the fall of 2000, and the inspiration behind it was a bit unusual. I fell asleep in class one day, dropped my pen, and it wrote a big blue streak down my shirt. I intended to write a silly poem incorporating that experience with a dream a friend had the night before...I was thinking about the first three lines as I walked around campus, and the rain pounding all around me made me want to write something with a lot of rhythm...I kept repeating the line "I dropped the pen," and the poem just kind of came together, into something that was not at all what I'd set out to write. And then I thought about it constantly and worked on it everywhere I went for the next few days until I'd gotten it all.

This is the only really abstract, symbolic poem I've written, so it might be difficult to understand it. Each object and feeling in the poem does have a specific meaning...but I'm not going to describe them - if you're interested in my interpretation email me and I'll send it to you; otherwise just let the rhythm wash over you and let it relax, or haunt you, and let your own meaning for the poem come to you.

The Stratified Earth
I wrote this poem standing atop Horsebarn Hill at UConn, on a rare very sunny and warm December day, 2000. Just climbed the hill and looked out at all the layers of the world, for an hour or so, enjoying one of those rare wonderful times when, for the moment, all is simply right with the world.

Horsebarn Hill
I wrote this poem a few days after The Stratified Earth...about the experience of standing out on the hill and writing The Stratified Earth. ;)

Cold Rage
This poem is about the way rage can make you feel powerful, alert, invulnerable because you don't care if anything hurts you. The feeling for it was from one night in February, 2001, walking to volleyball practice at 10pm. I'd felt that way pretty constantly that winter...and sharp cold, for some reason, is a feeling that I like when I'm angry. Part of what I was doing while writing the poem was trying to figure out whether the feeling of power that comes from rage is real or an illusion...and concluded that, because it can disappear so quickly, it is not real - only a temporary high, same as with a drug, sport, or other emotion. Not real, not pleasant at all...but in some strange way, awesome, at the same time.

Question the World
I feel I sort of missed the mark with this poem (Spring 2001)...it's about questions I'd had, matters I'd felt strongly about for a long time (and still do, actually), but I don't think I put it into words very well. Maybe eventually I'll be able to. For now, not one of my better poems. The point I was trying to get across was basically: I think asking questions is good.

The Girl with Flowers in her Hair
The girl with flowers in her hair was me (though none of this actually happened) - I used to work with genetically engineered tobacco plants in a biology lab at UConn, and every day after I finished in the greenhouse with them I'd have to stand in front of the bathroom mirror, brushing the little pink flowers off me because they were so sticky. One day (in Spring 2001) looking in the mirror, at a time when I knew an ex-boyfriend was still interested in me and I sometimes tended to drive him crazy, the analogy between a girl and a tobacco flower struck me. I wrote the poem from the point of view of a neutral bystander...I'd be especially interested in feedback from guys on this poem, to see how accurate I was in writing from a male perspective.

Pinkening Woods
This is the least happy poem I've written. I wrote it in the summer of 2001, driving down the road, noticed some extra-pink trees...and well, though it's not about a lost lover, the rest is pretty much as the poem says.

Losing Focus
This poem's about the UConn chapter of Intervarsity, a Christian fellowship that I was a part of in college. I wrote the poem in Spring 2002, my junior year. We'd begun the school year as a group of enthusiastic, self-sacrificing, hardworking people who walked the Christian walk as well as talking the talk...and somehow degenerated over the winter into a bunch of gossipy, lazy, childish friendship circles, with no idea how to get our fellowship back to the way things had been. Things did get better, but sadly I don't think the group totally recovered, at least not til after I'd graduated. The line in quotes is taken (slightly altered to fit the rhythm), from a book in The Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, which I'd recently read, spoken by a character that I liked a lot, even though she turned out to be evil.

The Sea was like Oil
One day in Greek class I was translating a passage and read the line "the sea was like oil." I read it uncertainly, because until that point the passage had been describing a scene that was beautiful. But my teacher nodded, yes, I was translating it correctly. It took me a moment to realize: saying the sea was "oil-like" was saying it was beautiful. Oil, which has such a negative connotation in modern America, is (as my Dad put it) life in the tiny mountain villages in Greece. I guess I can't exactly complain about living in a land full of wealth and security...but somehow, where life is more difficult, and more challenging, so often people appreciate its beauty ever more.

Angry Clich�
This poem's kind of loosely about a friend going through a "rebellious" phase in college that was anything but, and sometimes drove me a bit crazy. I meant the first line to be (besides a bit of a personal joke) a reference to the song What's the Frequency, Kenneth?, one of my favorite songs by REM, not just the clich� itself.

Happy Birthday to Grandpa
This was inspired by my extended family, all gathered around a birthday cake on a summer day (2004), singing to my grandfather on his 80th birthday. When we got to the line "Happy Birthday dear ____________ " you couldn't really discern what came next, because people said so many different things, and the moment was just a very beautiful illustration of how many things Grandpa has been in his life, and how much he means to us all.

Brightness
January 29 2005, morning...the day before had been difficult and scary and I was a bit afraid to face the next one.

Churchbells and Sirens
I don't really even remember writing this poem, I just found it among some old stuff as I was cleaning. It's about the night my brother died. From where I found it I probably wrote it in the spring of 2003, about three years after it happened.

Last Night of Summer
August 27-28, 2005 I wrote this, though I might work on it some more. This is first thing I've written in a long time, and also my first love poem. I feel very lucky to have someone that I can write something like this about. =)

Purity
This just came into my head last night (Jan. 27, 2006). I can probably improve it some.

City Life
I didn't write this; it was a cell phone text message a friend sent me from a trip to Boston (January 2006). I felt the way my phone displayed the message fit the subject material, so I made a poem of it.

Restless Essay
Written early September 2006...this is basically Last Night of Summer a year later. A bit depressing to parallel, and I don't quite know what to make of it. I didn't intend this at all, but as I was writing the last verse it kind of came out a parallel between my current state of romantic love of a person, and love of God: before the fall (while we were falling in love), after (which is now), and hope for pure, free love (of a person, in marriage, or) of God, in heaven, in "the life of the age to come."

I'm not totally sure what to make of this parallel, either.

When I Have a Moment
This is my first "real" song, written about 1995. It's the first of my trio of dorky sad love songs, and I think the dorkiest of the three =P. None of the feelings in it were real (in fact, all of my love songs were written before I'd ever been in love). I was basically just trying to get the feel of putting music and emotion to words, imitating what I'd heard on the radio all my life.

Stars are Fallin'
The second of my sad love songs, this one is from 1998 and probably the least dorky of the three. ;)

Chasing a Legend
I wrote this song in a single afternoon (1999), pretty much on a whim, just because I had the phrase "chasing a legend" for some reason stuck in my head. This song probably has the least melodic structure of any of my songs, too.

My Heart Skips a Beat
Another pretty dorky sad love song, this one from 1999.

I'll Always Be the One for You
I wrote this song in 1999, right about the time I graduated from high school. Alas, I had no one to sing it to at the time...but I had a couple characters who'd grown along with me since kindergarten, so the song is for two of those boys to sing to two of those girls, as they all graduated.

A side note: I don't know what it is with me and love songs. This is the only really happy one I've written at all, and I only wrote them before I'd ever been in love. Before I ever fell in love I was annoyed by listening to most love songs; afterwards I liked listening to them, but could no longer write them, though a couple times I tried. It's all very strange.

The Bells
This is my only song in which I followed the correct "order" and started with the music, then wrote the lyrics. I just had the "Bells Music" stuck in my head one day, and wrote the words, and mood, of the song to fit that. Unfortunately, I don't know how to write the music to give you an idea of how it sounds...all I can tell you is there are bells in it. =P

Bad Weather
This song was really hard to put online in html - hopefully you can make some sense of how it's supposed to go! I've never sung this song at all, because both parts are really necessary for it, so I don't actually even know how it sounds. Still, it was fun to write, and it's one of my favorites. I wrote it in 2000, my freshman year in college. As to its meaning...well, honestly it doesn't have one. This is my only piece, of any type, that doesn't have a meaning; it's just nonsensical. I meant for it to be just a very high-energy song, that's fun to sing and see performed.

Waiting
I wrote this song during a time (sometime in 2000) when I felt a strong desire to do mission work, but kept letting fear, doubt, and trivial setbacks stop me from it. The song is about that feeling.

"Jesus Ballad"
This is a very simple song, that I wrote in less than an hour, sitting on the grass in front of the South Campus dorms at UConn in fall 2001, just on an unexpected spurt of inspiration. Also, this is the only song with actual music written for it (thanks to my best friend Larissa, who set it to some simple guitar music =) ), and it's the only one I've sung in front of anyone.

Colors Clash
I once had a debate with someone over whether our world is meant to be in black and white (i.e. There's one right belief system, one right way to act, everything can be classified as right or wrong), or in color (i.e. many ways that are right). My position was always that the world is in color, and we're meant to have many different ideas and cultures in the world. I wrote this song a few years later (in 2002) in response to some terrorist act or threat of war; I don't remember exactly which. I still think that this world is meant to be in colors, that it would be an incredibly boring place if we were all the same...but I don't know, I don't think anybody knows, why so much pain and suffering has to come along with the good.

King of Life, King of Love
This is my second Christian song. One day (in the fall of 2002) the phrase With your last breath, you gave me life just got stuck in my head, and I wrote the rest of the song over the week or so that followed. The concept of the nails not being what held Jesus on the cross isn't my idea - it came from a little sort of poem, called The Nail, that I'd had hanging on my wall at the time.

Ranger
In a broad sense, this song's about the many things that a band member has to sacrifice in order to be constantly on the road. It seems every band has a song in their repertoire about being a band, so though I've never been in any band I figure this song can't be too out of place. There is actually a specific story behind this song, too, though it never happened; it's just part of a storyline for a few of my many characters whose stories only exist in my head. If you can follow all this I'm impressed:

The song was written by Mark (lead guitarist) and Jonah (lead singer) for Aaron (drummer), who are all members of a small band, which I never named, just trying to get their songs heard and their feet off the ground. They're devoting tons of time to it with not much visible success yet. One night they have a gig in a tiny, wasteland town in the middle of nowhere. The night before, Aaron's girlfriend tells him she doesn't believe that he loves her, that he only has love now for the band and its success. She tells him that if he leaves her alone again the next night, to go play in this rundown old town, their relationship is over. Forced to choose between them, he chooses the band. Later, at the club after the concert, a teenage girl kisses him, thrilled by the idea of kissing one of the band, and he lets her, thinking it might get him past thinking about his (now ex) girlfriend. A few minutes later he finds out that the girl at the bar has a boyfriend, also present and pretty good and drunk, who learns what happened and tries to attack Aaron, but Mark intervenes, and a fight begins between those two, but Aaron breaks it up before anything can really start. So he prevents the violence, their small-town gig is a success...but in the end he's still lonely and can't see a way out of that.

It was the concept of "slowing the fall only to fall for longer" (which I felt I'd been doing quite a lot of at the time) that was in my head to get this one going, along with a Lord of the Rings sort of take on the word "ranger". Just about all of the above story is somewhere in the song - if you can relate it all, or even bother to try, high-five to you. =)

From All Directions
I wrote this song during my senior year of college (winter 2003), about trying to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life, and the feeling that too many possibilities can be just as disheartening as too few.

Sting
I wrote this song in the spring of 2004, over fear of restarting an old relationship and ending up hurt, stung, just as I'd been before. I began it again anyway, foolishly...at least it makes a decent song.

Under Wing
Technically I wrote most of this in the summer of 2004, but the concept for it and the chorus came over a year earlier. It was the first line of the chorus that popped into my head one day to inspire this song. It's about (obviously) the sadness that any parent figure feels at their child's leaving the nest to make their way in the world, despite their joy at seeing the child all grown up. This song has a more specific story, too, though: it's by the same (fictional) band as Ranger, and it's written by Mark (guitarist and sort of leader of the band), for Jonah (young singer with more talent but less drive than the rest of the band). Jonah, only a college freshman, was considering leaving the band to focus on schoolwork. Mark was pretty upset about this, since Jonah had basically been his prodigy, and wrote this song in anticipation of the day when Jonah would leave their small band for greener pastures, in music or elsewhere. He realized that, bitter as he was over the issue, he did not want to hold Jonah back...and also that the success of the band was not the only reason for which he didn't want his young apprentice to leave.

...oh, and in case you're wondering, Jonah chose to stay. ;)

Running Song
The inspiration for this song came in the summer of 2001. I think I actually got to writing a few verses down in 2003, because I found them along with a bunch of old clutter from that time. I finished the song and posted it just recently, but I think it still needs some work, especially the last verse (and maybe a better title, too =P ). Anyway it's about the sort of peace I felt walking home after going running along woods and back roads one summer evening.

Standing Alone
This song (written in March 2006) had several sources of inspiration, but the main ones were two Old Testament Bible verses: Deuteronomy 15:11 and 30:4. The ending of the song just kind of cuts off - I'm still trying to come up with two more lines to end it.

Let Me Confess
April 2006. Another Christian song - I guess I've been in that kind of mood lately - though this is a bit different from my usual sort. Going to confession is a very rare thing for me, and one night after church I wanted to go but didn't because I didn't want to make the group of friends I'd come with wait. I was thinking about it the next morning, and thought to God "let me confess," and it turned into a song.

I tried to take all the frills out of this song, to make every word meaningful, which is where this differs from in fact most of my songs, not just the other Christian ones. I guess that's one of the difficulties I feel when writing songs as opposed to poetry - my songs usually end up with some fluff in them. Anyway...I tried to make the words of this song just pure simple honesty, because that is what confession is about.

Reason to Stay
April 2006. Songs seem to keep forming in my head lately, maybe because I've been driving a lot. This one is totally fictional. It's about an ending summer romance that was love to the girl and a fling to the guy. (It's also my first venture into mildly explicit lyrics.)

Come and Praise the Lord (In the Shallow Land)
I woke up one morning, at a church conference in South Carolina (~New Year's, 2007), with the line "Come and praise the Lord, in the shallow land" in my head. I wrote the song based on this line. Ironically, I think the part about "the shallow land" is a bit awkward with the way the rest of the song turned out, but I kept it because it was the inspiration for the song. I wrote rest of the song in the car on the way home.

Love Song
The phrase "these three remain" got stuck in my head as I was driving one night, and I wanted to put 1 Corinthians chapter 13 into music. Even though I know it's been done before.

Usually I don't like songs that quote large passages from the Bible very much. I guess for me the point of music, like many poetic devices, is to add to the impact of the words expressed. One way music does this is to make the song stick in your head, so you remember it. I tend to like songs with short, simple tunes. Usually songs (that I've heard, anyway) that quote large stretches of Bible don't have much in the way of rhyme, rhythm, or repeated musical theme, and sometimes the effect is that the music becomes a distraction, instead of it helping you to remember the words so that they stay with you.

I put rhyme and rhythm and repeated tune into this song as much as I could. The sacrifice in order to do that is that I changed some phrasing. I encourage you to read the full chapter. The biggest changes are: I took out some of v.1, I changed the order of v.5-7, and I condensed and tried to simplify v.9-12.

There are also a few things I'm unsure about. One is the word "wrongdoing"; for awhile I changed it to "injustice" (both words are used, in different Bible translations), then back. Another is the phrase "these three remain." I looked up some different translations, and saw that most actually say "these three abide". However, "remain" is what is well known in America, so it seems catchier that way, like it'll stick better. I've also changed this word, and changed it back again; I hope to discuss it...especially since I don't even know exactly what Paul meant by this phrase.

Do You Know My Name?
The phrase "Do you know, do you know, my name?" got stuck in my head as I was driving (March/April 2007), and eventually I wrote a whole song for it. At first I'd meant it to be a dramatic song, but it came out more just-for-fun.

Follow Hymn
July 2007, one night, just a couple hours. Melody got stuck in my head, and I couldn't do anything else til I had a whole song down. The words could still do with some tuning up. This song feels like it could become much longer, too...like me or others could just keep adding more verses if they came to us. The point of the song is: life on earth is a battle and Christians are meant to fight, using Jesus' love as our weapon.

The strange thing about this song is that I am (at the time I wrote it) very far from meeting the challenges that I set in it. I haven't even read the Bible in months. I'm feeling now, and have been for awhile, like I did when I wrote the song Waiting.

Hologram
Mid-July, 2007. Song is about feeling like a relationship has gone nowhere and backwards for so long that I start to doubt whether the dreams it was originally founded on were even real. I like the word "hologram" for the title because it sounds like "hollow", which is another thing I'm afraid the relationship is, even though I don't think the words are etymologically(?) related.

Image of You
Early September, 2007. Been writing a lot of Christian music lately.

There is so much of Him to go 'round
Mid-September, 2007. Wrote most of this in the car on the way home from a choir rehearsal. It came, I think, from an amazing feeling I had earlier this week: the feeling of doing a very small unselfish thing, hesitantly because I wasn't sure if as a result I'd get enough, and suddenly and unexpectedly I was just *filled* almost to overflowing with Jesus' love, and the conviction that this very simple thing is what I'm supposed to do, the thing I'm supposed to do that I've been trying to figure out for a surprisingly long time. Just give of myself, and don't worry about myself, because God, the same God who fed 5,000 with a few loaves and fishes, isn't limited by a small amount of starting material. So just trust him.

Pale New Summer
One night (early Nov, 2007) the first line of the chorus played in my head. So then I wondered what a pale new summer was. I figured out a meaning for it and finished the song over the next couple days. Despite the lame origin, I think it came out pretty good. It's about materialism, and how it causes our material things to control us instead of us controlling them.

Letdown
Early December, 2007. Pretty straightforward song, fictional but based on things I've felt. I think it mostly came about as a result of practicing singing scales, with my boyfriend...ironically enough.

Earthly Armor
Mid December, 2007. About the temporariness of every thing on earth. Seems to be a theme for me lately.

All of Your Pain
January, 2008.

Crazy Simple
I wrote all but the last 3 lines of this song about 2 years ago...I don't even remember what inspired it except for the title phrase getting into my head. My boyfriend and I had had a mostly idyllic relationship up til then, and was in this state when I wrote this song...but soon after we started taking our relationship to a deeper level and delving into some issues upon which I knew we'd disagree, and had thus avoided them til this point. Our relationship became more difficult, and as I'd never come up with a satisfactory ending to the song, I decided not to finish it til we'd resolved our disagreements. Through lots of discussion and compassion and working together, we resolved them...and a week ago we got married...and now I'm finishing the song. The last 3 lines are still a bit more abstract than I'd like, but this is the first time I've been able to come up with any that can express the feeling with which I wanted to end the song in that short a space.

It's late August 2008 now, by the way.

If interested, read the poem Restless Essay, which I wrote at the time the road in our relationship got rocky. An important point that I learned: "crazy simple" is a description of momentary feelings of ecstatic joy in a relationship. These feelings are very real, but comprise only a small portion of the time you spend with your partner. A relationship, as a whole, is not simple.

Headlights
I wrote this while driving alone on the highway at night (Sept. 1, 2008), musing on the oncoming headlights. This is a song because it has music to it, but in content it feels more like a poem; it doesn't have a complete story, more like a momentary picture and a snapshot of thoughts that go with it. It's also (not by conscious effort) dense, more like my poems usually turn out than my songs do.