some poetry
hi all,
my big poetry project for the second quarter was about adrienne rich (if you don't know any of her poetry, look her up!! she is a way groovy juvie, even if she's a bit old now) anyway, i had to write 5 emulation poems, and i did all of them within 2 days of the due date, but they came out really well anyway...i don't know, i guess i was in a poetic mood that weekend. :-) so here they are, and yes, a bunch of them are inspired by nhrhs. so let me know what ya think, k? and if you want to know which adrienne rich poem inspired which one, let me know.
~heathen
Excavation (i've been wanting to write it since last summer, and it finally came, so i'm sort of thrilled)
Drawing energy from the ancient dust,
I take the pickax, the bucket,
to begin the search for her.
I take my directions in a language I don’t know.
My brush caresses dirt packed solid by the centuries.
I cough on the dust that hasn’t stirred for millennia.
Brushing flyaway hair from my eyes,
forgetting the dust in my throat,
I begin to unearth the spirit.
There! a shard of pottery catches my focus.
Who was she, who am I, who made the amphora,
smoothed it between her/my hands?
She/I held it, all those years ago,
just as she/I hold it now.
It is heavy, rough under my calloused fingers.
Closing my eyes, I feel her whole amphora.
It was a masterpiece, carelessly smashed after an ocean journey.
I can almost smell the wine.
I am she, just as she is me.
Across years and winds, two women connect
held together by a shard of clay.
Explosion (here's to you, mr. gornell. here comes the aclu!)
I try to reach them with my words,
sitting at that too-small, hard desk.
Women stare out of a poster,
past glossy teacher-store paper,
giving me strength.
Teacher lounges, feline, against the podium,
supported by lies, though he plays the source of truth.
I open my mouth, choose my words,
let the truth explode into the silence.
But my rope is too short and it doesn’t reach.
My voice is not loud enough to be heard.
He laughs, and I have done nothing.
Pity
You were nothing I’d seen before,
back then when I thought I’d seen everything in that place,
spinning dizzily through the labyrinthine white hallways.
You were the nail not yet hammered down,
standing solo above the melee of that place.
A year later you’re not so strong,
fierce as a lion cub wishing to be king.
Poor spirit, struggling so hard,
refusing to be smothered by yourself
or that whitewashed world.
Dragged down by so many problems,
nets you cannot seem to break,
you act as though you will explode some day
and break all the oppressive chains.
You are blindfolding yourself against a truth:
There are always chains, darling.
Take a breath. You will learn,
you caged lion cub,
how to be strong.
That Place
In that place, there was no we.
The white cinderblock walls sucked at us,
pulling us apart until we could barely touch.
Girls looked out surreptitiously,
behind too much paint, afraid
to show eyes that reflected a free spirit.
The school taught them lots of things:
how to tear a person apart,
how to be predator and prey.
Community burned at the stake,
as would-be friends separated
for the Moses of the latest gossip.
The furious echoes off the bare walls
smothered all truth:
all that could be heard in the cacophony was silence.
To a Friend (you know who you are. so let me know what you think, k?)
Time seems to go at odd paces.
It’s different here: short moments in a long eternity.
The ball rolls here, continuous,
so unlike the high rhythmic bounces
of those long moments in my short-cut time with you.
I had to leave to keep my calm. You I could tell:
the others got a fun-house-mirror version of the story.
I couldn’t stand the way they watched me,
pausing only to throw things: unruly kids at a zoo.
I was not good at holding the pain,
but the ache is farther away now,
a lurking menace, awaiting the tiniest opening,
and yet its shadow is close enough that I keep searching.
Words flow into a black notebook, endless.
Behind my eyes is a snapshot:
two kids on a cramped bus plan to change the world.
Maybe those words will come alive,
but I’m not sure I want them to
because I also saw an adobe house and pottery shards
and I thought maybe that would be enough.
Maybe pottery shards were all I needed.
When people wouldn’t take me, those bits of pottery would.
And so I worked to join something even as I shied away.
I couldn’t decide what I wanted.
My thoughts led me in eternal circles with no destination
until I realized that for me the joy is in the journey.
My road leads me through scenery that is always new,
yet sometimes I see something I know, some transplanted landmark,
and the familiarities tell me that you still understand.
my big poetry project for the second quarter was about adrienne rich (if you don't know any of her poetry, look her up!! she is a way groovy juvie, even if she's a bit old now) anyway, i had to write 5 emulation poems, and i did all of them within 2 days of the due date, but they came out really well anyway...i don't know, i guess i was in a poetic mood that weekend. :-) so here they are, and yes, a bunch of them are inspired by nhrhs. so let me know what ya think, k? and if you want to know which adrienne rich poem inspired which one, let me know.
~heathen
Excavation (i've been wanting to write it since last summer, and it finally came, so i'm sort of thrilled)
Drawing energy from the ancient dust,
I take the pickax, the bucket,
to begin the search for her.
I take my directions in a language I don’t know.
My brush caresses dirt packed solid by the centuries.
I cough on the dust that hasn’t stirred for millennia.
Brushing flyaway hair from my eyes,
forgetting the dust in my throat,
I begin to unearth the spirit.
There! a shard of pottery catches my focus.
Who was she, who am I, who made the amphora,
smoothed it between her/my hands?
She/I held it, all those years ago,
just as she/I hold it now.
It is heavy, rough under my calloused fingers.
Closing my eyes, I feel her whole amphora.
It was a masterpiece, carelessly smashed after an ocean journey.
I can almost smell the wine.
I am she, just as she is me.
Across years and winds, two women connect
held together by a shard of clay.
Explosion (here's to you, mr. gornell. here comes the aclu!)
I try to reach them with my words,
sitting at that too-small, hard desk.
Women stare out of a poster,
past glossy teacher-store paper,
giving me strength.
Teacher lounges, feline, against the podium,
supported by lies, though he plays the source of truth.
I open my mouth, choose my words,
let the truth explode into the silence.
But my rope is too short and it doesn’t reach.
My voice is not loud enough to be heard.
He laughs, and I have done nothing.
Pity
You were nothing I’d seen before,
back then when I thought I’d seen everything in that place,
spinning dizzily through the labyrinthine white hallways.
You were the nail not yet hammered down,
standing solo above the melee of that place.
A year later you’re not so strong,
fierce as a lion cub wishing to be king.
Poor spirit, struggling so hard,
refusing to be smothered by yourself
or that whitewashed world.
Dragged down by so many problems,
nets you cannot seem to break,
you act as though you will explode some day
and break all the oppressive chains.
You are blindfolding yourself against a truth:
There are always chains, darling.
Take a breath. You will learn,
you caged lion cub,
how to be strong.
That Place
In that place, there was no we.
The white cinderblock walls sucked at us,
pulling us apart until we could barely touch.
Girls looked out surreptitiously,
behind too much paint, afraid
to show eyes that reflected a free spirit.
The school taught them lots of things:
how to tear a person apart,
how to be predator and prey.
Community burned at the stake,
as would-be friends separated
for the Moses of the latest gossip.
The furious echoes off the bare walls
smothered all truth:
all that could be heard in the cacophony was silence.
To a Friend (you know who you are. so let me know what you think, k?)
Time seems to go at odd paces.
It’s different here: short moments in a long eternity.
The ball rolls here, continuous,
so unlike the high rhythmic bounces
of those long moments in my short-cut time with you.
I had to leave to keep my calm. You I could tell:
the others got a fun-house-mirror version of the story.
I couldn’t stand the way they watched me,
pausing only to throw things: unruly kids at a zoo.
I was not good at holding the pain,
but the ache is farther away now,
a lurking menace, awaiting the tiniest opening,
and yet its shadow is close enough that I keep searching.
Words flow into a black notebook, endless.
Behind my eyes is a snapshot:
two kids on a cramped bus plan to change the world.
Maybe those words will come alive,
but I’m not sure I want them to
because I also saw an adobe house and pottery shards
and I thought maybe that would be enough.
Maybe pottery shards were all I needed.
When people wouldn’t take me, those bits of pottery would.
And so I worked to join something even as I shied away.
I couldn’t decide what I wanted.
My thoughts led me in eternal circles with no destination
until I realized that for me the joy is in the journey.
My road leads me through scenery that is always new,
yet sometimes I see something I know, some transplanted landmark,
and the familiarities tell me that you still understand.