NaPoWriMo's over, but I'm still writing poetry

I've actually written poetry since I was in 7th grade.  I can even tell you when I first, deliberately wrote a poem that was meaningful to me.  It was during Science class...  Anywho, as I've gotten older and busier, and as my writing tastes/priorities have changed, I've been a much less prolific poet than I was as a kid, but I never did quite stop.

It always makes me sad to hear others say that they have.  Unlike other writer-y things, for me poetry has never a hobby or a life-goal or any of those things that you can pick up, put down, or change into something else.  For me, poetry was, and is, more than what I did it was, and is, who I am.  I am a poet.  I don't know if I've always been a poet, but the moment I picked up that pen (it was Science class after all...pens!) and scribbled off that first angry/hurt/confused non-rhyming verse to and about my friends (see! all these years I've been consistent), a door opened in me that can't be shut again.  I may walk past the room in which all my poetry hides, but I can't brick it up.  I can pretend it's not there.  It will come bursting out of me to be doodled on corners of notes, written on the palms of my hands, or repeated like a mantra in my head until I can get it out of me.

This must be how a dancer feels, or a painter feels.  They can't not dance.  They can't not paint.  It is as much them as it is in them.  Assuredly, I've gone long stretches without writing a single verse, rhyming or otherwise, but that doesn't mean they weren't bubbling and bouncing around in my head.  I've been more likely to quit writing than I ever was to quit poetry.

What's your thing?  Everyone's got something they're just drawn to, right?

And since this discourse was not the point of my post, here are the two, very brief, poems that I intended to share when I sat down, under the cut.  If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you've already seen them:

5/11/13, getting ready to perform

I once shaped my nails

in the shape that you desired

because you mocked them in your ire

and I hated them every day

until they grew back in

5/12/13, homesick in my own bed

It hasn't always been

starlight & roses

but we usually managed

sunshine & daffodils

Now that you've gone so far away

I miss you