Poet Among Us: A Q&A with LBCC Poet Rocky Moll
Q:What does poetry mean to you?
A: “To me, poetry is beauty and art written down. It can come in so many forms and be interpreted in so many more. When you look at something especially beautiful, or experience anguish it evokes strong emotions. I think poetry is a way of trying to explain those emotions.”
Q: How does this affect your voice as an artist?
A: “My poetry tends to be very emotional, I have referred to it as ‘Sad Boi’ poetry because it touches on pain, anger, and the complex turmoil those things can create.”
Q: What kind of themes (subjects, images or syntax) do you find yourself going back to lately?
A: “Recently though, I have been writing more and more about my journey to self love, and nostalgia. It still has an air of despair, which seems to be hard for me to omit from my writing, but it has more hope in it than most of my poems.”
Q: What does confidence and vulnerability mean to you in regards to poetry?
A: “Confidence and vulnerability to me means having confidence in my writing, whether it’s good or bad it is 100 percent me, and my emotions manifested into words onto paper. And being vulnerable is being able to share that.”
Rocky Moll used the pen name “Ravenshire” for a while until they felt ready to participate with an audience.
Q: When did you start doing open mics?
A: “I started reciting my poetry in open mics in the 6th grade (consequently, when I began writing poetry) my teacher had a love for poetry and he took the class on a field trip to share the poetry we were writing for class, it was a wonderful experience and it really got me interested in poetry as journaling.”
Q: How long have you been a part of LBCC’s poetry club?
A: “I found LBCC’s poetry club last spring and have met amazing people who have shared such wonderful poetry. It’s a great outlet for anyone looking to hear something new or share something, and theres always such positive feedback!”
Q: What keeps you going when it’s hard to write?
A: “When I’m stuck in my writing, I kind of just take a break, sometimes it does get hard to write and feel like I’m writing anything with any substance behind it. In those times I just focus more on my life around me. I never really worry, I know I will always come back to poetry.”
Story and Photos by Angela Scott
Untitled
Hate will always exist because
Great love will always exist
And those who cultivate hate
See this love
and know they have never felt it
Have never felt the sunshine and honey they can see so clearly
Have never had it flow through their souls so deeply there could be no mistake, that They have been racked by Great Love
So they hate it like they can never have it
Like it is impossible to fathom the feeling they have not yet known
When they reach for it
They are pushed down
Because they reach hastily
Desperately
Trying to fill the hole their soul wears like a badge
Like a marker of a broken heart
A torn tattered rag
Used down to its last thread
Hate keeps them alive
Because inside they are dead
And it’s so easy to hate them back
It’s so easy to be the one that shoves them down farther
Making the climb out
Just that much harder
Making them hate with just that much more fervor
Making Love, no more than a murmur
We do this because maybe
maybe, our own love
Isn’t that great
Maybe we’re still in the midst of creating the greatest beauty we can know in this life
Trying to paint yellows oranges and blues over the black and greys we’re all so used to
when they reach out and smudge the corners we lash out in a rage
“HOW COULD YOU!!”
How could you look at what I am creating and possibly think to defile it
How could you hate my painting of Great love?
But they don’t
It has nothing to do with you
They see this Great Love
They want some too
Without trying they’ll hurt you
Make you feel like a mess
They’ll smudge up your painting
They’ll make you feel less, Like the human you were once before
make you have to restart and fix the holes that they’ve torn
straight through your heart in an effort to spill
some substance they’d hoped
Their own holes to fill
Poem by Rocky Moll
