On the Third Day
Four in the morning-as I write the words. After dragging my procrastinating clay feet through the muck of revisions, I have tossed myself into bed. Atop a mound of sundry novels and my own drafts, which caps my microwave like a stout and foolish hat, is a mug of gut-puckering instant coffee. The tablespoon sticks out at an acute angle from its ceramic lip, and the handle curls in a perfect C. Heavily patterned baroque music winds in the background, and I have long been attacking my poems for this final portfolio.
Unlike prose, poetry is like making a doll. A small, independent miniature. Poems are just as living, if not more vivacious, than prose, but poems fit in spaces narratives are too wide to. Thus, I feel dreadful that some poems take two whole pages to get to their aesthetic punchlines. I am neither Eliot nor Homer, these trains of conjunctions and scenes are better busted up, individually tinkered with. That is, I really ought to tear down this statue of an impossible Moloch and make lesser gods from the debris.
Poetry should "delight and instruct." Which English nobleman said that? Or was it one of the Romantics?
"A hot neutrality begs me to believe/I have nothing to say," not a perfect line, but it the enjambment is nice...
Now and again I bring the mug to my lips, taking in pygmy rivulets of java. Then I place the cup on its perch once more. Next I peck at the keys, peck at my poems, peck at my essays, peck at my paragraphs.
I sip, and I peck. I sip, and I peck.
And all this from within the confines of my bed, now sheathed in sheets of paper like scales of white armor. This reclined position recalls so many mornings spent hurrying assignments into words. I would like to believe that I carry my essays in my head whole. I am flattered to admit that I perhaps do most of my thinking on paper, by the skin of my pen, as if it were. Or more accurately, by the skin of my fingers.
Soon, this moment will be through. This moment, I am aware is built of other moments, some which will overlap with the moments following. Albeit, a whole other chapter is promised in by the silence of the academic calendar. For a month a variety of liberty will be permitted.
This poetry class has reawakened something.
This semester has undone something else.
This poetry class has undone something.
This semester has reawakened something else.
Unlike prose, poetry is like making a doll. A small, independent miniature. Poems are just as living, if not more vivacious, than prose, but poems fit in spaces narratives are too wide to. Thus, I feel dreadful that some poems take two whole pages to get to their aesthetic punchlines. I am neither Eliot nor Homer, these trains of conjunctions and scenes are better busted up, individually tinkered with. That is, I really ought to tear down this statue of an impossible Moloch and make lesser gods from the debris.
Poetry should "delight and instruct." Which English nobleman said that? Or was it one of the Romantics?
"A hot neutrality begs me to believe/I have nothing to say," not a perfect line, but it the enjambment is nice...
Now and again I bring the mug to my lips, taking in pygmy rivulets of java. Then I place the cup on its perch once more. Next I peck at the keys, peck at my poems, peck at my essays, peck at my paragraphs.
I sip, and I peck. I sip, and I peck.
And all this from within the confines of my bed, now sheathed in sheets of paper like scales of white armor. This reclined position recalls so many mornings spent hurrying assignments into words. I would like to believe that I carry my essays in my head whole. I am flattered to admit that I perhaps do most of my thinking on paper, by the skin of my pen, as if it were. Or more accurately, by the skin of my fingers.
Soon, this moment will be through. This moment, I am aware is built of other moments, some which will overlap with the moments following. Albeit, a whole other chapter is promised in by the silence of the academic calendar. For a month a variety of liberty will be permitted.
This poetry class has reawakened something.
This semester has undone something else.
This poetry class has undone something.
This semester has reawakened something else.