🔵 By Joseph Sandoval. Photo by lauragrafie.
What has been my fuel? My “muse”? If you will. Pain, heartache, anguish, feelings of hopelessness, being lost, or alone. I felt so many of these through the years. Something was embedded during my early teens, perhaps years before and it just continued to grow from there, I experienced the full impact of these emotions in 2013 when I was sentenced to a 15 years to life term. I was dealing with losing my freedom, my daughters, my girlfriend, the death of my oldest daughter and my grandmother (who for me, was my second parents, due to an absent father). It was just a massive wave that hit me like a tsunami of pain. I fell into a deep depression.
I loved drawing since I was about 11 or 12 and used it at times to express my negative emotions (Even more during my incarceration) in late 2013, early 2014, I began using poetry as another emotional outlet. Initially it was how I’d express love for my girlfriend at the time. But after she left, I mostly used it as an outlet for painful thoughts and feelings.
Depression had befriended me to the point that it became my muse in poetry, as well as in my drawing.
Why poetry? What drew my attention to it? I was in LA County Jail from March 2012, through about October 2013, I remember clinging onto the lyrics of songs I heard on bus rides to and from the courthouse. I remember the many inmates that I came across who enjoyed rapping and writing lyrics/bars (spitting rhymes). It was poetry swag; or the fewer ones who sang R&B type songs. It all was so fascinating to me! Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed listening to music way before this. (Lyrics of songs) the only difference at the time was the thought of expressing emotions into words, in sing or in literature. I came across a book shortly after my sentence, about Tupac Shakur. I was sort of a fan of his music. In that book, it spoke of his life before his fame. He wrote poetry. I think he was even in a class that taught it, if I’m not mistaken. Don’t quote me though.
I read quite a few books around this time and was filled with Awe and enchantment of how words were used and put together to express emotion and tell narratives in vivid detail.
I knew I wasn’t a writer or educated enough to write a book. But it became a desire of mine to express myself artistically in written words, so I thought, “Why not poetry?” aside from my desire to express myself emotionally in this way, I knew or assumed that “It’s a poem, so it has to rhyme”. Little did I know then that poems don’t necessarily have to rhyme and that it came in many forms and styles.
My primary way of expressing myself artistically is still through drawing, but writing poems and even my own quote come second. I’m by no means a pro nor would I claim to me! I don’t have a high level of education, I was a high school dropout, but obtained my GED when I was 27.
Perhaps as I read more books on famous poets or poetry itself, I’ll get better at conveying my message, my feelings. Reading Dr. Suess’ books doesn’t count! Does it? I remember nursery rhymes as a kid. That’s somewhat of a foundation of poetry I guess? I have noticed in my poems I tend to express myself in a metaphoric and surreal manner. (Not sure why it happens that way?) It is non-nonsensical and odd but yet sensical. Sentences of phrases that aren’t quite clear yet unequivocal. Not all who read my poems will understand their sentiment and relate to such thoughts. I’d assume only those who’ve visited, or are in the “Murky Realm” will understand the shadow language spoken, remember the gloomy scenery of such a colorless and hopeless world. The same world we all live in, but viewed through the obscured lens of depression. That is another thing I’ve noticed, my poems now mostly are my expression of pain and suffering. It is my muse for sure. It overflows so I must put it to something creative and useful.
As Carrie Fisher said, “Take your broken heart and make it into art.”
Those are words of wisdom to me.