Poetry

Getting back into the writing classroom means I'll be putting up some poems again.

Poetry work today--well, yesterday; it was homework--involved composing respresentations of more abstract ideas and vice versa. I rather liked some of what I came up with, so I'll put them here.

Exercise: A salesman of the body for the price of sweat
Amusement: A capering buffoon
Wretchedness: The cowering of the leper beneath a thousand glares
Locality: The province [eh...got stuck on this one]
Velocity: Overtaking the world
Attraction: The strings that pull the eyes and the hand that beckons the body to follow
Dryness: A tongue’s desert
Spiciness: Arcs of lightning popping the taste buds one by one
Agitation: A taut neck below wide, unfocused eyes
Deception: The dagger in the comforting hand
Insufficiency: The withered sum in a debtor’s palm
Authority: A gavel-pounder on high
Success: A ribbon whose ends flutter in the runner’s wake

//

Puppet: Manipulation
Hummingbird: Agility
Lightbulb: Alertness
Brick: Inertia
Playing card: Risk
Newspaper: Information
Wastebasket: Rejection
Padlock: Security
Mailbox: Expectation
Dust: Neglect

//

A world retreated quicker than a thought
Although I heard no whistle of the wind
And in an instant every speck forgot:
The actions spent, the earthly portrait dimmed.
I ope’d my mouth the passage to recall
But caught not even dust to savor well,
For in departing hence in part and all
The world left not a breeze behind to tell.
I clasped my temples, and in vain I strove
To wring from them a poor, delaying trace
Of what had been; my fruitless efforts drove
The tang of sweat to bead upon my face.
But even if I wait until my last
I’ll ne’er return to nor restore the past.

We also had to write poems about a "disappearing world." The first interpretation that came to mind for me was the present disappearing into the past.

Time to tuck in.