Pantoum & Sonnet.

Pantoum:

My mother tells me
there are things you don’t do
and then THINGS YOU DON’T DO
And there is a difference

there are things you don’t do
(walk out on a pregnant woman)
And there is a difference
Between that and the checks you send.

(walk out on a pregnant woman)
don’t; you’re asking for trouble.
Between that and the checks you send
That trouble lasts a lifetime.

don’t; you’re asking for trouble.
Everyone who’s done it knows
That trouble lasts a lifetime.
And you will always be a deadbeat dad.

Everyone who’s done it knows
There are things you can’t change
And you will always be a deadbeat dad
And you’ll always be exactly like your father.

There are things you can’t change
And then THINGS YOU DON’T DO
And you’ll always be exactly like your father
My mother tells me.

–

Sonnet:

The crowing of the teacher would not stop
Though many men had wandered through before
And on no store could they have placed her stock
And of her teaching, none would want for more
And for their reaping, none would stand to gain
The diligent, the studious and aught
And for her keeping, none would choose remain
There after school to be the better taught.

The teacher would not teach for very long
She’d struck a student with her knobby cane
And no one clamored to her weak defense
And those against her banded to a throng
Their vengeance vindicated by her shame
The knuckles on her cane stretched white and tense.

poem for sale.

I wrote this today. I had the thought for the aliens for a little while in my head, but I was reluctant to write it because Kim Addonizio uses the same kind of idea, of aliens…little beings that influence our thoughts and make us DO/FEEL certain things. Anyway, I finally just wrote it.

–

Does anyone else see the alien in the room?
He is editor to my thoughts. He is always there
Mashing up my feelings and pressing them
through the filter you cannot see.

He sifts and filters, and the good stuff
comes through, the good stuff…how he knows
I cannot say. But he does and it makes
the days a little easier. He takes the edge off.

When he keeps them at bay I’m mostly human
Only sometimes slipping into alien thoughts
Alien living. But sometimes I go days being
Disconnected. Thoroughly liking the feeling

Sometimes I catch him in mischief, or slacking
Taking the bad stuff, the bad thoughts–
Fermenting their pulp, and storing it away;
What he plans for them I cannot say

But I’ll whisper it: I think he plans toxicity.
For a torrent of it to flood through my system.
I think he’s dumping the stuff and staying,
To see if it’s Me or Him that remains.

Who would it be? I wonder. Him or Me?
Him or the brain? It’s tough to wonder
And even as I do he helms the filter,
Stronger, maybe, stronger than I am.

After all, it was Me who needed Him.
I wasn’t prescribed to fix the alien’s thoughts.
This he knows. This I know.
Our détente remains.

Some stuff.

Two poems I thought of:

This is a poem I found via someone’s LiveJournal last year. It’s a list poem done very well. I’d recommend it.

http://www.poems.com/special_features/library.htm?

–

And of course, Langston Hughes’ classic poem “Let America Be America Again.”

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed–
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek–
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean–
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home–
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay–
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain–
All, all the stretch of these great green states–
And make America again!

Poems.

Bass reverberates against
the slippery white slopes of my spinal column
otherwise rigid: now released
a sweet reprieve from high-backed chairs and
endless dirges of work, work, work…

the trilling of trumpets sounds echoic
against the white chamber of concrete
slabs and human beings,
thousands of teeming vapid dreams,
the scent of popcorn and nachos wafting
through the air to land, ultimately

on the noses of tens of hungry combatants:
Gladiatorially gifted, pituitarily lengthened
beasts.

As for me, the dream is immersion
In the soft fat deposits of rich
Humaneness, cheering
For teams,
Thinking of nothing.
Thinking of nothing at all.

–

The date that made you limitless.
The date whose fine lines belied her…personality.
The date whose father used to hit her.
The date in which you spilled coffee on your pants.
The date that never ended.
The date you wish had ended.
The date that ended in divorce.
The date that hurt you when she didn’t return your calls.
The date your father died.
The date of your first incarceration.
The date your mother died.
The date who kept looking at a spot on your neck.
The date who was a whore.
The date who was a banker.
The date who was an escort.
The date who stole all your pants.
The date we landed on the moon (20 July 1969).
The date in which you were over the moon.
The date in which you weren’t.

–

ORIGINAL POEM (Danish):

jeg klamrede mig til luften
imellem
dine druers springende kærner

Jeg klamrede mig til rummet
under
dine spredte ballers fladen

jeg klamrer mig til farven
hvor
den truer hver pixel med et fix

jeg klamrer mig til musen
mens
den sletter safternes nervøsitet.

–

MY POEM:

the sun bakes the rusks
expanding
under nature’s callow fire

the sun bakes bald heads
glistening
under uncovered swatches of terrace

the sun bakes the solidarity
swarthy
of teeming masses of soldiers resigned

the sun bakes the solid bulk
exposed
of bronzed and buttered naked flesh

Re: Snapshot Poem

In re: Snapshot poem (Ross)

Cry, cry the jagged whine!
That high pitch of liberated feeling
Wounded animal’s plight.

You’ve earned it from the times you didn’t cry
When in those nights, your
solitary sighs compelled not
tears, but dry eyes—
Tough resolve
dogged, stubborn pride…

Socked with a baseball
Hit in the balls—
When no one can blame you
you let it come to the surface
And peek its ugly head out:
Hurt, for the first time
exposed as a raw and beating
organ;
sand kicked on ends
of nerves,
vessels submerged
Drowned in viscous oil
Made to choke.

All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men…

Early draft of some Humpty stuff:

I was one of the king’s men who found him
Crazy bastard
Leaping off the top of a too-high wall,
Body bulbous, falling unprotected.

They say he stayed strange ‘til the moment before.
Then his caterwauling ceased
And he jumped into a scene—
A fat projectile mounted on
currents of air
Carrying him down in a graceless arc
To cobbled streets…
Below, Ground Zero.

Split open his innards oozed,
A filmy glaze of organs and booze,
And Humpty’s brain and eyes
Flowed fast
astream the runny
Eggwhite soup.

He lay there, spattered
Over two square blocks of commerce
Disrupted.
And strolling gentleman with
Handkerchiefs in hand,
Covering their noses,
Shielded their eyes.

As for me, I was among
the men who sorted him out,
or tried;
It was fruitless.
For all the king’s horses,
And all the king’s men,
We couldn’t put Humpty together again.

In-class poem.

Beginnings of “On the Building of Boxes”

Boxes that speed down tracks in trains
Contain stowaways looking for freedom
In a new land.

Constructed like coffins out of slabs
of Cedar, the boxes
are built by laborers’ hands;
The man who builds his coffin
out of rough wood and nails
claims it as his own,
and rides through the night
past mini-waterfalls and
abandoned warehouse parking lots.

My Great Uncle Norm used to
tell my father,
“Butch—these men are looking
for a better life, and they’re
coming here to find it.”
My father asks, “Why must
they hide?” Haven’t we all
been free since Old Abe
proclaimed it?

The boxes have no holes—just
the spaces the laborers leave to
breathe—
No mirrors or vanities. No
food, no bathrooms.

Navajo Blackberry poem

Writing requirements: Use five words out of several given, and weave them into a poem that includes a proverb or aphorism. (Words: cliff, whir, needle, voice, blackberry, clouds, mother, lick)

–

On the precipice of cliffs
We Navajo grow plump blackberries
to sell to hungry tourists.
Mouths purple with our juices,
Teeth stained, they tend to thank
us noble savages–
Voices soft and pedantic,
Humming in a vague whir,
Daunted by their place in our world.

Sometimes we are cruel, and
throw stinkberries into the mix
to watch their eyes go bug-eyed
as they lick the seeds from the
tops of their teeth
and grimace.

They pretend to be appeased
and smiling thinly, give
thanks.
Mother sees, and reminds us sternly,
“Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

..

Following that we were asked to write the same poem in a different style.

Sometimes we put stinkberries in
Bushels of blackberries.
We do it because we’re tired of
Hearing you sympathetically say
“We mourn your loss,”
Like our displaced culture
Benefits from your sense
of Courtesy and Grace.

Snapshots.

First, let me link again to a GREAT COLLECTION OF POETRY (also visible on my sidebar). These are poems a writer from Stanford has collected on her blog. They’re all very good.

–

I told you I could pop them for you. Your veins. Meaty veins, the color of worms, that when I press against them wiggle in and out of place, navigating a terrain of thick strong flesh. Your eyes go wide and for a moment you fear me, your demented child, sick with curiosity. But your black eyes flash to my mother’s laughing face, and they crinkle like Christmas. You bounce me on your knee, then, and I am putty in your hands.
–
I hate it when you cry. You cry like a wounded animal does, like a dog does. It’s a keening sound, the hoarse high whine aside the gasping breaths. You let no one see your face, obscuring it from view with interwoven fingers on the sides, blinders from your shame. Socked with a baseball. Hit in the balls. Whatever. You’ve earned it from the times you didn’t cry, the times you watched and didn’t say a word, just let it come near the surface and peek its ugly head out.
–
You’re like a lobster with its claws clipped shut. An ineffectual lobster. You’re red all over, tears streaming down your face, and you’ve come at me with your fists bared. Karate fists…Secret weapons. You begin to pound on me, and your little frame is coiled tight like a spring, like all the force in the world couldn’t hold you back forever. It doesn’t. A nine-year-old does.

–

As a note, finepewterportraits is from a Ben Folds Five song (“Battle of Who Could Care Less,” Whatever and Ever Amen). I thought it’d be appropriate to share that here, given it’s from a song lyric (poetical in its own right). The full line goes “Fine pewter portraits of General Apathy / And Major Boredom / Singing, ‘Whatever and Ever Amen.’”

Unit Response.

Can be found here.