Monday, January 25, 2010

Writing an angry poem

This is one I wrote in class this morning:

You need to leave
Get out
Or this smile you admire and your lips mimic with spite will be gone forever
Don't coddle me with "It's okay"s or
Tell me it was just a phase
I'm annoyed now, blood flowing like acid through my veins
And when blood boils, humor is the first to evaporate
I like you
And I thought I l
Well, I just lost my train of thought
in the sound of pianos talking and the crinkling of Valentine's Day cards.

I need to revise this into a 19-line poem, so it's not complete yet. The prompt was to write a list of things that you'd lost (see Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art") and then write a poem featuring 1) a dominant color, 2) a dominant motion, 3) no adjectives, 4) no adverbs, 5) direct address, and 6) a refrain. So that's interesting - on my list of lost things I wrote stuff like "erasers," "pencils," chapstick,

Well, I'll just write it out:

Many erasers, many pencils - so annoying
Chapstick
My place on a page
My train of thought
First chair of orchestra in 8th grade - lost it to Ha Eun Lee
Lost my life to Christ
Facsimiles of love, which were crushes taken too seriously
I lost my mind when I tried to take two classes held at the same time, and one of them was Intro to Chemical Engineering
Lost my sense of direction on a highway in Houston
Lost my voice

No comments: