Poetry

Like many young folks, I went through a phase of believing that only I could see the true nature of the world and it was my unfortunate duty to make others aware of the futility of existence. I chose to do this through the medium of poetry. Then I didn't let anyone see the poetry because it was too personal. Luckily this phase didn't last for very long, but I continued writing poems for a few years before my interests moved on.
I still have my collected works, they range in quality from awful to okay and in tone from morbid to confusing to a hint of whimsy in the most recent ones. I often wish I'd continued to develop the skill but I didn't, and whilst it's never too late to take up a new hobby the impetus behind my writing has faded somewhat. That is the main reason I'm starting this blog, and perhaps one day I'll try my hand at poetry again.
Poetry, when executed well, is marvelous, to take words which are already complex in nature, and layer metaphor and meaning behind them is a work of genius, but to further constrain that behind meter and lyricism astounds me. There is something timelessly beautiful about poetry, Shakespeare's sonnets are still often read and quoted even now because their rhythm captures something almost melodic that speaks to the soul of humanity.
Rhyming isn't as easy as it seems, especially to not end up sounding contrived, but the end result sounding natural and simple, it's a thing of wonder to me.

Language has always fascinated me, the way we take letters and arrange them into sounds which we assign meaning to, that we use an assortment of phonetics that can be traced back through countless generations, that have evolved along side us. Language is like a living thing in many ways, adapting to new environments, picking up words and phrases that are useful and discarding those which it no longer needs. Our ability to create, grow and then shape these words into poetry, songs, prose, is really quite astounding if you think about it, you can convey so many emotions if you so choose, or cleave them from the text and present it cold, all whilst using the same letters and sounds just in different combinations.