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.

Lunchtime

Dear Readers,
So sorry for my long absence! It has just been a crazy semester so far, so much so that I'm still trying to prune my schedule of anything excess. For example, I dropped chamber singers this week because it was much more stress than it was worth. But readers, I've been writing poetry! Although this is a requirement for my creative writing class, I can feel myself getting better and better at poetry - its fantastic! Sometimes I read my old poems and laugh at how much image I crammed into those lines, while now I look for the one image that will be convey my experience exactly. So readers, without further ado, I give you my latest poem; I'm not saying its perfect, but I feel pretty proud of this one. Let me know what you think!

Lunchtime, February 16, 2010

Today the black tar asphalt sizzles
beneath our tires.
I can’t breath; the air lies down upon us
like an old man slumped in his rocker,
but here I am, stuffed in this blue sedan, surrounded
by Snickers wrappers.

How can Allison and Kat not care
that my stomach feels
like an empty plastic bag?

If only I could reach up,
pluck the sun
from the egg-blue sky - peel back
the rich skin and squeeze the juice,
let it burst
from the packets of flavor wrapped
inside to leave tears of sticky sweetness
down my salty face.

Comments to a

Dear Readers,
I'd almost lost hope in my love for poetry, that is before I wrote this poem! Its just that my semester is absolutely crazy!!! I have no time for fun things like writing poems - I'm always reading for my religious studies courses, both of which are GEs which makes them annoying rather than fun. But readers, even though I don't even have time to be writing this, I wanted to share this small sonnet I just completed for tomorrow's creative writing class. I'm not a big fan of sonnets, so I didn't really have a purpose when I started writing this. But I think it turned out pretty well, so let me know what you all think!

Comments to a red rose

Once in these petals, soft as night, that blur
into my rusted gate, bees took their fill
of sweet white wine. The golden nectar
that drizzled down their legs fell on your frills,
your sweet red dress then stained with amber jewels.
I watched awhile on those blue steps before
the door leaned into me, the handle cool
upon my fingers. Winter comes in poor
disguise - your petals blackened in dismay,
pooling around the earthen pot set out
to catch the final boat of the sun’s rays.
And now, the stiff air that runs throughout
the rooms meets my lungs, tightens the gap
between our worlds - my present to unwrap.

The day we learned

Dear Readers,
I'm learning that its very difficult for me to process things. One of my favorite professors is my poetry teacher, Dr. Willis. He publishes poetry pretty frequently, and most of his recent work has been about the Tea Fire - his house burned down. I think poetry is a beautiful way to express your deepest thoughts, since many of the things we know about ourselves are only snapshots. While the fire was a traumatic experience, I have yet to put into words some of the most difficult emotions I face. I think one of the things I've always wanted to have an outlet for is the experience of dad's cancer - being able to put that experience down into words, and words that mean something to me, has been one of the hardest things. And while I don't feel like I've hit the mark in this poem, I've come the closest so far in remembering that experience.

So here it is; the rough draft of my mental snapshot:

The day we learned

Joy eluded us in that moment,
slipped softly out the glass doors
without so much as a parting
word. I remained with the cold sunlight
that somehow pushed its way
through the black glazed windows.

Chrysanthemums exploded outside the cement,
blinding pink, a defense mechanism against
sticky-fingered guests. They drooped a little
with the March heat. Water would have helped.

That day we learned that germs
can’t travel through white, and hospitals
beds can resemble coffins under the right
circumstances. But he wouldn’t go in one,
wouldn’t stop the day for a moment
to take off the stiff lab coat
and enjoy the weight of the full
April sun which burst through
my open windows where I sat
thinking not of philosophy, nor
the fact that my yellow roses were
starting to wilt from lack of water.

In the Morning Light

Dear Readers,
Doesn't everything look better in morning light? I'm convinced that I could wake up early every day of my life and be satisfied just because of the light in the morning. I believe it was Henry David Thoreau who talked about how men would bottle up morning air because it was so healthy and sell it to those who slept in late. Everything seems more attainable in morning light; you have a whole 24 hours ahead of you, but only a few hours to enjoy the sense of a fully-realized day before the sun moves and all you have is a blue sky and hours of work ahead of you.

But readers, even better is the morning light that is obstructed by gray clouds. Its the perfect excuse to stay home and enjoy a good book with a steaming cup of tea while watching the rain. That may be one of my favorite things on earth to do. Unfortunately though, you need a good window, something which I currently do not have. I have a window. It, sadly, doesn't look out onto a picturesque lake, or mountains, or even a meadow. No, I get to see all of the other apartments. Yay. But readers, I have a dream that one day a lake or mountain (or better - both!) will be outside my window one day, covered in sheets of rain so I can have that beautiful light bathing my surroundings and be in the moment when life seems to be taking its time so I can have that one perfect day of reading/tea drinking.

But for now, all I can do is turn off all the lights in my room (my house-mate just came in and told me it was like a cave) and listen to the sound of the rain hitting the pavement outside my window.