About Oakley C. Merideth

My name is Oakley C. Merideth, no relation to the sunglasses manufacturer. The “C.” stands for Chad. Just something I thought you might want to know. As for my origins, I was born in San Francisco California, but have lived in Santa Fe for what have been the more important days of my life. I am seventeen years old and will be a senior next year at Santa Fe High, something I find at once exhilarating and also unfortunate.  Exhilarating because it means the burden of high school will soon be a thing of the past. Unfortunate because I am running out of time to think up a spectacular senior prank. You may thinks it’s a little early for that kind of stuff, but you might not go to Santa Fe High. Anyway, I’ve been writing since the fourth grade, and most of my effort has been towards poetry, which will be the main subject of this blog.

The first real poem I ever read was Lewis Carroll’s “The Jabberwocky”. I suppose it was just the image of a monster articulated in a non-existent language that made me like it, but, for quite some time I read it frequently. Since then, I’ve always wanted to ride a horse while holding the severed head of a mythical behemoth while my father shouts “Callooh! Callay!”

However, that’s besides the point. The point is, for most of my life I have held an affinity for poetry. I love writing in general, but my attempts at stories very rarely bring forth any fruit worth consuming, and, although I would not like to appear as the boastful type, I do feel that I have some talent in composing poems. I won the 2004 NM Culture Net Poetry WebSlam, went to the Sewanne Young Writers Conference at the University of the South, will go to another Young Writers Conference this summer at the University of Massachussessts in Amherst, and have done a few other things with my poetry.

As for why poetry is important, there are many reasons. Besides our supreme outlet for catharsis, poetry is also something that can and does convey so many things about the universe and life in a way that it turns the ideas into beauty and makes them easier to understand. Dylan Thomas took the hard but truthful fact of dying and created his poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”, a piece that illustrated our love of life and why we love it in the most eloquent way possible. Poetry also ahs the odd characteristic of being one of the most ancient art forms, yet, one of the freshest, perfect for expressing both modern and old ideas in a new light. These are just a few of the reasons I write and enjoy poems.

Anyway, here’s something I recently wrote. Feel free to comment on anything I write, in whatever way you choose to.

Abattoir

To dream of skeletons

Is like seeing a mirror fill up with laughter

And than to watch it break,

But I had begun to suffer in the world

And I was always traveling in and out of smoke

Which made the air fragile,

Something I could breathe little of.

To dream of skeletons

Is like walking through the slaughterhouse

And hearing the laughter as it whispers

From a dead woman’s lips,

Only to be taken apart by the noise,

The updraft of the open window.

Walking through the slaughterhouse

Is to shake hands with the dead

And make jokes with blood on the fingers,

Did you hear the one…

Oakley C. Merideth

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