Winter shares a room with three other Seasons
The Moon and the Sun breathe the same Air
The Forests embrace the Rain
The Flowers don’t need to impress each other
The Wind moves the Dirt
The Ocean kisses the Sky and meets the Sand

And then there is man…

Who wants his Land and won’t share
Who doesn’t like getting stuck in the Rain
Thinks he’s more superior than the next man
A man-kind of pollution that poisons the Air and litters the Earth
Who swims in the Ocean and walks on the Sand
Who are we to think we can?

I love poetry. I love reading it and writing it. It’s my passion and hope to be able to do this for a living and it’s my dream to hopefully one day publish some of my work.

The following poem is an English sonnet written in 10 syllables per line. I’m not sure if it contains 5 iambic feet. It probably doesn’t.That confuses me.

I’m thinking that this poem can become something bigger, like Canterbury Tales or something . I may or may not add to this down the road and make it a fictional story created by different sonnets.

I heard a myth from a man of the sea
That the blood from Mermaids turns into gold
I asked him how he gained word to tell me
He began the story to me he told
Over a few bottles of rum we talked
And I noticed he was drunk off his mind
I trust his tale though he couldn’t much walk
This drunken pirate was one of a kind
So after he finished the tale he spoke
I knew that this was a trek I must take
To embark on my journey, one man broke
I should set sail when the morning awakes
You may be thinking how foolish but yet
What a man must do to even his debt

I was inspired to write my first sonnet a couple of months ago and the topic I chose was how to write a sonnet because it is not the easiest task to follow the correct form. I challenged myself and was able to do it but I thought it would be a little more interesting to write it in the form of an acrostic poem. This poem is also an English Sonnet with 10 syllables each line.

It was tough to fit in some words because syllables in words can be deceiving and we tend to pronounce words with no regard to their syllables. For example…the word “different”. It is pronounced with 2 syllables but it really has 3.

A helpful site in finding out how many syllables words are : http://www.howmanysyllables.com/index.html

WRITE A SONNET

Well written words that follow a meter
Rhythm and rhyming and the pattern flows
In proper form to impress the readers
Tally the syllables in all the rows
Equal in quatrains, three different sets
And a couplet which is placed at the end
Sonnets are written and must look their best
Overlook nothing, make sure to emend
Now that you have written up to nine lines
Nearly approaching not far from fourteen
Enlighten yourself to think of a rhyme
That can wrap up all your thoughts at the seams

It’s fun to write sonnets, don’t you agree?
Now try to write one acrostically!

Because this is my last post on this topic, I wanted to do a wrap up. But because I’ve been doing some research on female serial killers, it wouldn’t be fair to only list the men and not include the women. So with that said, here is some information on female killers.

It’s not that female killers are rare, they are just harder to find. Their victims are usually people they know. These crimes are mostly emotionally connected, however, there are instances where these women have killed people they don’t know or have teamed up with a man to kill people but the majority of killings are committed through personal/emotional motive.

There are 2 main types of female serial killers:

Black Widows
Black Widows kill family members and partners for financial gain.

Angels of Death
Angels of Death target victims who are unable to protect or defend themselves. For example, children or the elderly.

Other categories women fall into are sexual predator killers or revenge killers.

Statistics
Women serial killers are said to kill by:

•     Poison (The majority)
•     Shootings (used by 20%),
•     Suffocation (16%),
•     Stabbing (11%),
•     Drowning (5%)

    ***While researching, I found no evidence of women killing by sadistic rituals.

Because I’m a fan of movies and shows about serial killers, I did research on Aileen Wuornos, who was the inspiration for the movie Monster. I think Aileen Wuornos falls into the category of sexual predator and revenge killer.

Aileen Wuornos
Killed seven men between 1989-1990 but claimed self defense
Sentenced to lethal injection-October 9, 2002.

Aileen had a brother a little older than her. Aileen and her brother were abandoned by their mother when she was only 4 years old and so they were adopted by their grandparents. Her mother divorced her father but Wuornos never met him because he was in prison for raping and trying to murder a young boy just when she was born. Aileen’s father was a schizophrenic, who committed sex crimes against minors. He killed himself in prison when she was 13.

Wuornos started to engage in sexual activities at 12 years old. She would peform sexual acts for food and drugs. She also had sexual relations with her own brother.Wuornos claimed that she was sexually assaulted by her alchoholic grandfather. At age 14, she became pregnant after being raped by her grandfather’s friend. She gave the child up for adoption and she began prostituting at age 15 to financially support herself.

After committing crime after crime, she eventually started killing and shot most if not all her victims. She was put to death by lethal injection in 2002. She had no trust in people, society and in the media. She felt like she wasn’t being portrayed in a fair light. She said this in an interview: “A raped woman got executed, and was used for books and movies and shit…Thanks a lot, society, for railroading my ass.”

I think Aileen’s history explains ALL of why she killed men. She claimed self defense a lot because she lived in fear her whole life. Her body was never her own and her mind was never at ease. After all she’s been through, I don’t blame her for wanting to get even with men. Being raped can take everything from a woman; her pride, power,hope…She wanted to have control back and she tried to find that in prostitution and murder. It’s a shame that someone who has been through so much grief and pain was sentenced to die. I personally don’t think the death penalty was a reasonable sentence because she obviously wasn’t a cold hearted killer. She had a heart, it just was misplaced with vengeance which shouldn’t be punished by death. What she really needed was a caring family and friends and a whole lot of therapy.

To sum all of this up with past posts, what I’ve learned through researching serial killers is that serial killers are people too. They were born into the world and were guided through the direction of their parents. Parents play a HUGE role in what happens to these people in the future. Whether they grow up in abusive households, with alcoholic parents, confined with no social lives, rape victims, mommy and daddy issues, etc. Good direction starts in the home. If these children are victims of a bad upbringing, it raises their chances of becoming unstable adults. I find that the recorded # of serial killers has went down in today’s world maybe due to the options we have as far as technology and medicine. I strongly believe that If a child shows signs of strange social behavior, this should be addressed immediately, especially if there are problems at home. The schools need to be alert and responsive to these issues and make sure the child receives all the help he/she deserves. Not because all troubled children will become serial killers, but because all children deserve to have a stable, healthy life and a clean slate into adulthood.

Thank you, The End.

http://www.criminaljusticeusa.com/blog/2011/10-infamous-female-serial-killers/

http://l-pawlik-kienlen.suite101.com/facts-about-female-killers-a52936

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aileen_Wuornos