Here is a smattering of poetry I have written for my "poetry writing" class. They're in no particular order; I'm just going to randomly slap them up here.
The Boy at the Door -9/8/10 (this was an exercise in writing prose paragraphs)
My eyes watered, my nose ran, and my fingers ached from the raw canyon wind cutting through the breath of morning sunshine. Six steps to the door of the old brick building. I reached out to grab the icy door handle, but before my frozen fingers could get a grip, a hand from behind--brown, strong, and resolute--opened the door. Stepping over the threshold, into the beckoning warmth of the Ray B. West building, I cast a furtive glance over my right shoulder. Around the gold of my hair fallen in my eyes, I snapped a picture of him smiling. His eyes were like deep chocolate; his hair, long and black as frost, was tied back in a primitive pony-tail. The dark forest-green of his coat ignited his skin so it glowed like homemade butter-toffee. To my frozen morning, he was summer. I smiled back, and, without a word, he followed me inside. Then I went my way, and he went his.
Kid with the Croakies -9/8/10 (another expiriment in prose-writing)
A white t-shirt with the insignia of a moose head--Fitch. He types on his lap-top computer, and cocks his head right, then left, then right again. Back and forth, as if each phrase he types is worth deep contemplation. Occasionally, I see himm sit back in his chair and bring his left hand to his mouth. He ponders in this position for a few seconds, the exhales and dives back in. Now he's scratching his chin and adjusting his black-rimmed glasses--he's wearing croakies. Oh! He's packing up and walking away. He probably thinks I'm a creeper.
The Kiki -9/8/10 (more prose)
Light and fragile as gossamer, a web of childhood serenity, it smells of tears and laughter all at once, and its touch calms the stressed-out student and covers the shivering child. The kiki is a hideous mass of pink and flowers, gobs of disintegrated batting, like a cloud, gifted from heaven, struggling to hold itself together. No longer can I wrap it around my shoulders, but I wrap my arms around it, and the wind doesn't seem as cold, the world doesn't seem as cruel, and the mourning of another day gone doesn't seem quite as dark.
Coming out of Surgery--Age 14 -9/2/10 (a memory poem)
slowly waking
a vase of beautiful flowers sits by my bed
lilies and daisies and oh so much green
why am I seeing flowers
remembering
long white sanitized halls
rooms with doors slightly ajar
full of suffering people
some dying
my room was down that hallway
seeing
dark whispering angels in green and white
with needles
monitors and equipment
watching me
waiting for my heart to stop
feeling
rough hospital sheets
i.v. in my right hand
pumping liquid into me
my rebellious spirit fights the drowsiness
smelling
cheap laundry detergent
Lysol and ammonia
that disgustingly orange soap
they made me wash with this morning
before I came
hearing
sterile air squeaking against the walls
footsteps somewhere
the turning page of a book
my heart
beep . . .
beep . . .
says the vigilant monitor
realizing
I'm still alive!
Going out of My Mind -9/27/10 (reanimating dead metaphors poem)
it was tough to escape
squeezing out my ears
I got stuck
once
but after readjusting
schlup!
I slipped right through
and left my mind
behind
September -9/27/10 (my poetic journey--driving south on 12th E. on my way to school in the mornings)
September exists in my hands
like a soundless breathless dawn
brimming bursting overflowing
into a silent valley
light leaking over the edge
of the mumbling mountains
captively cupped
kept
like a handful of sand
slipping through my fingers
Silence is a Bone -10/11/10 (in-class exercise with metaphors)
Break me!
your silence becomes a defiant bone
sweating smooth and breakable
say something
your silence is suffocating me.
Start Pocket Hold Lucky -10/13/10 (play with words)
I started into my lucky pocket
holding the start of luck
with a hold on the start
of a lucky start
in a pocket holding luck
luckily I started holding
in that pocket-hold
a pocketful of lucky starts
starting to hold onto
my pocket pocketing lucky
pockets of luck
my luck
in luck
of luck
by luck
a pocket holding the start
of something lucky
Untitled & Still in the Works . . . -11/8/10 (the beginning guts of a ghazal poem)
purple persistence, I sigh in the dark
inconceivable numbers so high in the dark
of kisses like stars or the hairs on his head
his heart overpowering mine in the dark
those hungering hands parched lips at my neck
devouring desperate time in the dark
the world forgets how to spin for a moment
I whisper my final goodbye in the dark
Germany -10/8/10
I am lost in a noncommittal limbo
of awaiting anguish
waiting for a response, a clue, a smack in the face--
something other than this un-breathable space.
I swim to the surface
of an upside-down sea--bottomless.
I cannot breath,
but I love drowning . . .
maybe, let me be.
Would you be fine without me?
Would your music still fill the emptiness
that used to be me?
Would you find another rose-colored melody to sing?
Will you forget the tune of me,
forget the fingering,
forget the chords,
the chorus, the bridge, the key;
would you forget how to sing completely?
I secretly hate you for being away.
But you aren't willing to think;
you aren't willing to open up an option, a wild unrealistic possibility.
You only say, "Come to Germany,"
but you never tell me why.
Song -10/18/10 (response poem to the poem Song written by someone, I forgot who . . .)
When I am dead, my dearest,
forget me.
Let me snuggle in a flag and ride the current of the sea.
Take down the photograph of me and the painting that I love.
Break the blue guitar, erase my music,
throw away that bottle of my favorite perfume,
take the jewelry, the lacy bra, the nail file, the high-heeled shoes,
and every thread of clothing ever worn by me,
take it all and build a fire.
Do not inhale my smoke or feel my warmth;
only let me simmer slowly.
Do not remember me at all.
Confession of an Ocean -10/25/10 (attempt at writing a sonnet)
Inside of me I hide an awful truth--
a murderer am I. Because of me,
the beauty of a lovely blue-eyed youth,
will wash away and drown. Because of me,
the German prince's heart will never hear
the sound that distance muffles with its blue
and heavy laughter which is mine. His fear
is everything they'll never get to do.
And still I am the killer. I am still
the vastly hidden separation in
the frozen heaping waves that crash to kill
the blue-eyed beauty and the prince--my sin--
I have no sense of sorrow for their pain;
I only feel the cold Atlantic rain.
Untitled -11/1/10 (working with line breaks exercise)
As relaxed as a cookie-cutter on Christmas Eve, and just as pinched
in this perplexing position, like sugar-cookie dough sprawled out on the counter,
stretching thin under Curtis's eyes as they roll over me
again and again, over and over, like a rolling pin,
flattening me, no wrinkles or folds or pockets of air, against the pew and the arm around
me, the arm of the boy I'm pretending to love, like I pretend
to enjoy Vertical Limit, because he is obsessed with climbing, and I
just want to feel someone's arms around me, but in that Thatcher church-house,
Curtis stares--
I can only hope that the sight of me with somebody else
drives him mad.
Trying to Understand Things -11/1/10 (this one has a different format that I won't be able to show in my blog. Just know that it's a lot better in the other alignment)
"Things include a lot of
things,"
he said. Dismal drops of July rain like
brushes on a Zildjian,
chink chink-a chink chink-a
things things things.
Silver strings and callused fingers
sing
the song my heart abandoned, and a
soupy satin tear upon my cheek, an empty
chime,
falls in time, as all the elements of disappointment
culminate that rhyming thing.
A pin-a-ling, a troo-la-loo, a frenzied rhythmic
dunk-a dunk
hollow plunk of stripped piano keys,
a naked symphony of misunderstanding.
"Somehow, I always seem to already know what you are
saying
behind what you actually say." He said.
"And just what is that?"
I ask.
He says, "It's just another one of those things."
That's all I'm going to post for now. There will be more to come! The semester isn't over yet.
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