For Easter

Dearest Readers,
Its palm Sunday! Yay! I didn't realize this until my Italian phrase-a-day calendar told me that todays word is "alleliua". I thought to myself "That's a strange word," and then it dawned upon me - my Italian phrase-a-day people are clever. heh heh. Anyway, here's a poem to commemorate this upcoming week. The story behind this poem, like so many of my recent poems, is that I had to write it. I have to do this project for my New Testament class where I create something (aka, a poem!) having to do with a Biblical text, then write a review on why I did this and blah blah blah. The point is, I have a new poem, and I actually really like how it turned out. Looking for inspiration, I stumbled on a William Carlos William poem that I really like. Hence, I stole the format he used and decided to condense my images into just a few.

One disclaimer: I just finished this poem. Therefore, its in its super-rough phase, but sometimes poems are the best like that. Besides, wouldn't you like to have it before Easter, since it turns out that I accidentally wrote a poem on the Easter story?

The Resurrection
Matthew 27:50-52

No one could
ignore
the blackened sky,

a black like burnt wood.
And then
the cry stabbed through

that black, a curtain
dripping
with purple velvet

ripping just like the sky
and the graves
bursting forth with people,

their sweaty, grimy bodies
filling
the streets, bones rattling

the blackened cobblestones
that Augustus
had worked so hard to standardize.

Loss of a Friend

Dear Readers,
This has been a good poetry weekend for me! Sheesh! I'm having to revise a bunch of poems (and write a few new ones) so you guys are totally reaping the benefits; that is to say, if you like reading my poetry. Anyway, this poem started out as a "Nonsense" poem (like Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky). I tried really, REALLY hard to make it nonsense, but it wasn't really. Dr. Willis told me "Maybe you're just not meant to write nonsense". And I think he's right. So I completely revised it, added on a couple stanzas and made it into a coherent poem. And again, this one isn't about an actual event at all! I just bought daffodils today for our house, so that's where that image comes from, but the rest is completely made up. Let me know what you all think!

Loss of a Friend

I plucked from the ashes of this
slow burn of a friendship the tattered
remains of bubblegum wrappers - plastic
lace like a lady’s gloves, fitted tight
around diamond rings, like the diamonds
your mother used to wear. They sparkled
at the parties with champagne and strawberries.

Those summer nights we hid beneath
the stars, tucked away between the arms
of weeping willows. That place was
filled with honeyed air and your blue
eyes, the blue that you find beneath
stones at the beach and, if you’re lucky,
in the frozen center of a peach pit
just pulled from the refrigerator.

Then we woke, opened our eyes to find
the cold dawn rising from its bed. We
rose too - but now the grass stained our shorts
and your blue eyes turned black as the back
of your mothers hand ran across your face
like it was slapping all of me out of you.

Your red-brick house never looked the same
to me. And sometimes, when I’m out picking
daffodils among the fields across the river,
I’ll pluck from our time together the hard edge
of a dirty rock and throw it as hard as I can.

Moving On

Dear Readers,
I just finished a sonnet! Woo hoo! I met with Dr. Willis, my creative writing prof, about my other sonnet (Comments to a red rose) and he gave me the option of writing another one since that one wasn't strict iambic pentameter. Well, I don't think this sonnet is strict either, but I kinda like how it turned out so I'm going to keep it in my portfolio (which is due next week, btw!) Readers, confession time: I usually write from actual experience, but this sonnet is totally made up! hahaha! Its about breaking up with someone, which I haven't ever done - but if I did ever break up with someone, hopefully I wouldn't do it like this. Anyway, tell me what you think, I always enjoy all of your comments. They are so encouraging.

Moving On

It once was with this old blue coat, stuffed in
my closet now, you covered the cold thoughts
that spread beneath my trembling lips like thin
cracks in summer ice. Pictures, like ink blots
on white napkins, stain my house with your face -
they’re packed in boxes now - shadows without
a meaning, yet the past I can’t erase.
Was it just yesterday you called about
the coffee stain I left on your brown couch
the night we learned your grandma died? I held
your hand, even though all you did was slouch
back in the seat. And there among the swelled
remains of once a love and now a lost
desire, I found I hadn’t paid the cost.