The opposite of a gun is wherever you point it

I was able to go see Buddy Wakefield, Brendan Constantine, Derrick C. Brown, Anis Mojgani, preform their poems live at the Holland Project. It was such an amazing experience I highly recommend going to one of their performances. It was surreal to see the people that I’ve only ever seen threw a screen, I was able to give each one a hug and have conversations with them. They also played off of each other which made the whole experience more real. Brendan Constantine even told me that the world needs my writing! One of the more memorable poems I heard was The Opposites Game by Brendan Constantine. Which was about an activity that he did with his students when he was trying to teach them poetry, basically he would find a line from a poem and have the students find the opposite words for all the words in the line from the poem. But when he used this line from Emily Dickinson My life had stood a loaded gun the class was doing just fine until they reached the last word GUN and this simple exercise soon turned in to a two day event. This poem really stuck with me because one word can mean different things to everybody, which made me remember why I love poetry so much. You never know how someone will interpret your words how it will impact them. It’s exciting to imagine how your words will be seen in everyone’s mind that hears/reads your poem. So the point of this post is to say Poetry is cool and I got to meet some really cool people.