Nothing says “quirky” like running around with a lampshade crown.

In October, I participated in a wonderful poetry celebration known as OctPoWriMo. One of our early prompts was to write a poem inspired by the word “eccentric.” The creative process remains a mysterious one to me (and probably always will), but through whatever machinations of imagination and muse, “The Dangerous Weird” is the poem that emerged.

I wrote it thinking of all the wonderful people I know in my life who have weathered the storm of being seen as different, odd, less-than-normal. It’s a celebration of that amazing, dangerous weird within all of us, something I think that my online community of creative folk can appreciate.

This community is one that inspires me and encourages me towards all sorts of mischief, like rambling about my love of Hugh Jackman and sloths, or dancing around on tabletops with a lampshade on my head (as seen at the last #myWANA Twitter party). The chance to be fully myself, knowing that I’ll be accepted, is an incredibly rare one, and one for which I am truly grateful.

So this one’s for you, gang. Enjoy!

“The Dangerous Weird”

i am eccentric
     you
          say
because color tastes of
          sound
because history is
          my dwelling place

i was a child with a calligraphy pen
     my mother's borrowed
          cameos
     a collection of teapots
a girl enchanted
          by amulets
     faerie
          unicorns
imagined elven revelries
worlds that exist only in my head

acne-cursed chubby sally-jesse-raphael-bespectacled awkward child
     too smart
          too ambitious
     teased and tormented for the dangerous
          weird
     (because idiot child bullies can't pronounce "eccentric"
          and don't trust the abnormal)

but i am a forward-thinking girl
          despite the obsession with dusty antiques
adulthood was my ticket to survival
and i
          waited
     honed and polished my weird
          shined it up like the best silver serving set
     to put on display for
          rare souls
    that understood
          (password: "kindred spirit")

today i find the peculiar ones 
     those 
          grownup off-beat children 
     catch them running through the rye 
together we make a mountain of 
          weird 
a paradise of 
     strange 
to us, the song of color 
          the taste of word 
     is to be savored 
time is neither linear nor measurable 
and the world 
          is 
     our playground 
eccentrics one and all