My friend Anthony and I wrote dark poetry all through high school, but we grew bored of presenting our work to the same ol’ people. Our small audience was the same high school girls who thought we needed friends and the same English teacher who always supported our writing, whether it was dark, sad, or even funny. When lunchtime rolled around, we were those scary kids who sat at the empty table with our headphones on and our pens in our notebooks.

My mp3 player was full of death metal and my notebook was full of angry poems. I mostly wrote in anger because of all the crap I’d been taking in school—from being teased by kids to getting beat up and picked on. Every time something like that triggered my anger, I’d write about it and it would keep me from doing bad things.

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Writing still serves to prevent me from harming myself or others. Instead of breaking chairs, I pace around my room thinking of poem titles. Instead of cursing or screaming at the top of my lungs, I WRITE IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

Most of what I wrote in my notebook about was high school experiences like getting bullied:

I blame all those sycophants
Who chose to follow nonsense
They chose to be a gangster, a thug
Now they’re really just lifeless
You know why they chose this path?
Because they never were loved
They never dared to look up
Deep in the skies above…

One day, Anthony mentioned Gspoetry.com to me. At first, I was skeptical. I figured it was yet another social networking site like MySpace or Facebook.

A Welcoming Family

I first signed onto the site on June 30, 2007. I’d never seen anything like it. It was like a family of writers, poets, novelists, artists, musicians, and bloggers banding together to create and to appreciate each other’s writing. No matter what race or sexual orientation or age you are, this site welcomes you.

I created my profile with basic information and a decent picture. For my Gspoetry debut, I posted a small piece called “Untitled.” I wrote it because a lot of people were asking me why I was so angry.

I could never be straightforward answering them. Most of them just seemed so happy and giddy that I didn’t feel they would understand. They were mostly concerned with gossip or their social circle so I didn’t bother explaining my life. I let my poem do it.

Now, If you look into the eyes of me
I speak words for the life of me
Not laughing, am I serious?
So please, call me mysterious
Updated every now and then
“Can someone lend this kid a pen?”
“Can Otis come outside and play?”
“Go away, b**ch, come back another day.”

I was angry because of the abuse that I’ve suffered in school as well as the negative stuff that was going on in the world (gang violence, school shootings, etc.). It seemed like it was never going to end.

The ending of the poem was my way of saying “Leave me alone.” Even the kids at school who didn’t bully me and just tried to get my attention bothered me. My goal upon entering high school was to abandon friendship and just pay attention to my schoolwork. I felt I’d made a stupid mistake by trying to fit in when I was in middle school.

In middle school I learned that the people you call your friends can be just out to get you in trouble. I didn’t believe that the kids who approached me in high school were being truly nice.

I felt more comfortable opening up to my readers online because they didn’t say anything negative about what I wrote and didn’t question me about my emotions or anything.

I got a few good reviews for “Untitled” from “gsers.” It felt good to just let everything out on a website where everyone could see it.

Finding Courage

I don’t write to put myself above anyone, but just to make my readers think. In my opinion, there are too many people in this world who make pointless decisions—smoking or drinking or stealing; girls doing something of a sexual nature; teasing other kids just to be accepted into some clique—out of fear of what others think of them.

image by Daniela Castillo

I was one of those people; afraid of rejection or of other people’s responses. (Maybe everyone is.) It took a lot of courage for me to write about what I felt regardless of who was reading it. Just to go ahead and write the truth made me stronger.

I wanted to speak for the kids like me, who were considered “lost causes” or “mentally unstable.” I considered myself the voice of those kids who couldn’t defend themselves; the kids who were always picked on or pushed around. Inspired by the angry music that helped me through high school, I wanted to create an anthem for them, or should I say us.

More to Me Than Rage

But Gspoetry also helped me branch out from angry writing and transition into more joyful and humorous writing.

I wanted people to see that I can be funny or happy when the time calls for it. I wanted to write poems for every characteristic in every person: abusive, spoiled, joyful, sarcastic, goofy. If I’m having a good day at school, then I will write about it. I’ll even go so far as to write about love when I get around to it.

Gspoetry also allowed me to experiment with different genres: haikus, sonnets, spoken word, and even erotic poems (yes, they have “erotic” as a genre). I’d learned about these in school but I was so tangled up in anger that I forgot about the other types. This site reminded me about them so I went and tested my creativity.

Finding My Audience

I began to get more comments. Someone posting “I like this” or “that’s hot” felt like a warm reception. The feedback gave me courage to write about almost anything. I even wrote about a relationship gone bad knowing that the person with whom I’d had that relationship was a member of the site.

If a poem is read a certain number of times (the number varies), it is highlighted in gold to indicate that that poem was popular. I went for the gold with a poem I wrote in gym class. “Hell Is Home” is about a boy whose loneliness shelters him completely from the outside world. But it’s also pretty hilarious. I thought that if I posted something with humor in it, my audience would see that there was more to my writing than just darkness.

“He’s not into sex
Not like everyone else
He’s spends most of his time
Trying to f-ck himself (as everyone instructs him).”

That got more discussion than anything I’ve written—and it went gold, my first, but not last, poem to do so.

Collaboetry and Music

Anthony showed me a Gspoetry feature that lets you work with one or more persons on a poem. It is called “Collaboetry.” I used the feature to co-write a poem called “Releasing Love,” with an Internet friend of mine called Meisha. “Releasing Love” is about a girl who strays away from emotion because of her fear of rejection. The character of her guiding light, written by yours truly, shows her that there is indeed hope for her in this world and that love will cure her soul.

More people clicked on “Releasing Love” than on anything I’d ever written; it’s still the top poem in my arsenal.

Anthony also showed me how to incorporate music into my poem. You go to a streaming music site, like imeem.com, and post the code that allows you to attach a song to a profile. By adding music files to a poem, you’re basically defining the mood of the poem more. It combines two forms of art.

A Home on the Web

Gspoetry.com is a community unlike any other, a family that only criticizes constructively and never just to be mean. I recommend this site to any creative writer who longs for some sort of tight-knit society outside a judgmental world.

Of course, sometimes feelings get hurt, and I’ve gotten into a few comment/message battles over criticism taken the wrong way. But anything and everything goes except for plagiarism—for that you are “booted’ from the site permanently. That’s a fair rule to me.

Gspoetry.com also sparked me to write when I didn’t have any ideas. If someone asked me to read their poem, I obliged and I was able to not only provide comments on the poem, but also respond to the poem with a poem. I’m growing as a writer and connecting with people through creativity.