I should probably qualify this: these poems came from an aborted attempt to write a poem every day in the year 2008. I lasted for a month, so I ended up with about 30 or so poems. I may post all of them eventually, but some of them stood out as being worth writing about. They aren’t all very good, but I found them interesting for one reason or another.

This is a pair of poems that I seem to have unintentionally given nearly identical titles. The first one is called “I Promised” and it goes like this:

You probably don’t remember
everything I promised,
but I do. They were the kind
where every one of them is “never”
or “always”
or something like that.
Now I always wonder
whether that was a good idea.
See, it was meant to make you happy
(or maybe that was me)
but I don’t know if you cared,
and anyway you don’t now.
But a promise ought to mean something,
and I can’t help but wonder
if maybe you still think it did.
I think I meant it.

I wrote a lot of poems and stories on the variation of “words like everything.” I will probably keep doing so occasionally. This is a pretty straightforward treatment of the subject of promises and words like everything.

The second one was called “I Promise” (present tense!):

It seems like
any time I make
some sort of promise
I always forget
about the variables
that go into
decision making
and assume that
everyone
acts like I
want them to.
It’s never
like I imagined.
Sometimes I wonder
if my imagination
isn’t working
against me
so I don’t
have to fulfill
my promises.

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on in this one.

What’s interesting here is the thought that maybe these were meant to be related. I have definitely played games with titles before, linking concepts. It’s actually one of my favorite things to do with otherwise unrelated stories, because the title can give them a really strong thematic link. Since these were never intended for public consumption I’m not sure if that was the plan. Nevertheless…