I get inspirations from anywhere. There are sites that I visit whenever I need to cure writer's block, like a message board I post on regularily and read my friend's works. Whenever I feel like writing, I listen to music by Our Lady Peace, the Deftones, or Matthew Good Band... I vent by writing. At times I reflect that it's kind of sad that the only way I can get any inspiration is through anger, but it works. I also tend to describe things a lot, to the point where my English essays come back with comments like "Stop rambling on!" and "Less description needed." Old hens. Note that this can be used to your advantage as sappy poetry contains a lot of description, metaphors, and big words. See Tips.

People around me can also influence me to write. "Kris" was about a girl I knew and pitied, mostly because her situation was one that I went through a few years ago. Writing about people who piss you off can be fun too, like those kinds of popular people who think they own the earth and know everything, when all they really know is how to be promiscuous, how to get high/drunk, how to make people feel like shit and how to apply makeup. I could go on and on. The betrayals people put you through are also good material (Show me any poem I've written and I can tell you when I wrote it, what was going on and who it's directed to). In fact, almost anything is good material if you look at it from the right angle and use the right language.

Remember, anything that will make your reader *feel* your pain, *sense* what you are describing, and *understand* where you are coming from makes for a good poem/lyric/story!