I’m currently reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari and listening to Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert. At first glance, these two books have seemingly little in common. One is a historical account of the evolution and advancement of our species, the other a practical book about creativity — what it is and how to have it.

Surprisingly, what these books have in common is the message that humans as a species are creative. As Elizabeth Gilbert says the label of “creative person” is an oxymoron because humans, as a species, are inherently creative.

I started thinking about how much writing I did when I was younger. I wrote a lot of poetry, blogged a lot more frequently, and at one point even started writing what might have been a short story or novel — I’ll never know which as I didn’t finish it.

It took some creativity (yes, there’s that word again!) to track down some of my old writings. Yahoo apparently deleted ALL OF MY EMAIL because I didn’t log in for a year. Sheesh, that doesn’t mean I didn’t want all those old old emails. I was really hoping to find some of my poetry there, in those emails that are now lost forever and ever. Next stop was here, on my website. It turns out that, in the process of repeatedly moving between hosting providers, my poetry was lost, and I did not seem to have a copy of it, as I only backed up the blog posts, and not the other content.

I checked on Google Drive, hoping that somehow, I had managed to have the foresight to stash a copy there. I vividly recall having kept all of my poetry in a document, not so creatively named, poetry.doc. Where could this document be hiding?

I also recall, several years back, going on a very similar pilgrimage in search of my poetry. I believe I was successful, but where were the fruits of that labor?

Is the suspense killing you yet?

This time, dear reader, I was successful.

I’m not ready to share everything. Poetry can be very personal, and my poetry certainly is. There was a point in my life when I felt that happiness was the enemy of my writing. That alone is very telling as to the state of mind that I was usually in when I was writing poetry.

Having said that, I did find one to share today. The inspiration for this one is clearly my love for the writings of Stephen King. But don’t take that too literally. The “It” in my poem is not a direct reference to “IT”.

Evil
The sun disappears behind the horizon
and with it goes all hope.

Night is coming and It is coming too.
There's nothing you can do to stop it.

It's what eats away at your heart and mind
when you're all alone, in the dark.

It lurks and dwells in your soul,
and feeds on your pain and suffering.

Existing since the beginning of time, 
It will continue to exist until the end of time.

Chaos, Madness, and Insanity,
Evil never dies.