Some poetry, I reckon

Wherein I post some stuff I wrote for Techniques of Poetry sophomore year. Take with several grains of salt.



Siege

Bait,
Lay,
Fray,
Fail,
Flail,
Flow,
Glow,
Potion,
Potency,
Procure,
Curator,
Cut-rate,
Cute,
Croon,
Droop,
Broom,
Boots,
Beach,
Peach,
Liege.

Transgressions

We skip.
We Bic.
We fake sick.
We steal shit.
We sip mad lean.
We hog blunts.
We blow xannies.
We rail addies.
We mix brass monkeys.
We pound Mad Dogs.
We flee slow jeeps.
We get so fucked.
We black our eyes
beating
the wrong front doors.

Lament to Benny; or, Voyage of the Beagle

Benny, you worst dog ever sat,
You stub, you nub, you eating machine,
Chewer of Venetian blinds,
Shatterer of flowerpots,
Eater of three-hundred-dollar boots -
Did the rabbitfur tempt?
I've yet to eat a meal that expensive in my life,
Fiend beagle, flop-eared madman.
And your whine, that simpering squeak -
Feedback? Amplified bee? Witch's weep?
I don't need it, dog, but I did need
Those six chocolate cookies,
Those half-dozen donuts,
That multivitamin pill,
That mechanical pencil,
Those artificial flowers you confused for food.
Some puddle-rich, post-rain days, though,
I miss you, fool hound -
A chunk of light brick, kicked, chuckles down the walk
And we're all too sane to give pursuit.

Scavenger Hunts (II)

Everworld: Search For Senna - K. A. Applegate - 1999

• shiny malls
• Taco Bell
• straight-as-a-ruler streets
• stuttering cries
• the bad-ass act
• the feel of chill
• some hardcore jock
• some black guys
• some white guys
• smaller, olive-complected men
• the cracked, white leather seat
• flickering skull-sconce torches
• tarred, split logs
• some insomniac up late
• a memory of a dream

Everworld: Enter the Enchanted - K.A. Applegate - 1999

• the locker combination
• the light of the dragon's fire
• a mocha and a pannini [sic] made with hummus
• freezing black blood
• a sort of tough-girl slut
• another drama guy
• a feral snarl
• National Merit Scholar
• faint flashes in the gloom
• Barnes and Noble
• a god, shrunken to near-human proportions for the moment
  

Bad Scans (III)

Tate Regards A Trampling At The County Fair

The number pinned to my back was itching me
When the dust whipped around
And the crowd made the sound
Of a horrifying afterthought.

Crones in a wet tent cradled paper boats
Of salt potatoes in their laps
When the leathery snap of splitting halter hit.

Not that a horse's fit truly breaks
The ringtoss din, the screech of bolts, the chit-chat;
It was a narrow commotion.

Just like you'd test a cake for doneness
Was how the polished hooves gouged
His legs, his chest.
He balled up, his wounds met.

Each step of the Clydesdale's
Peppery, undignified dance
Hurt him worse.

I don't blame the beast for treading him
But I do blame him for spooking.
Everybody, horses included,
Gets scared when they can least afford to.

Plenitudes

Snow Soup

A brief mix.

1. The Crabs - Love and Hate

2. Tapes 'n Tapes - Moldy Bread

3. Hood - Biochemistry Revision Can Wait

4. Sebadoh - Punch in the Nose

5. Drake Tungsten - He Was Soon To Undergo an Experience for which his Long Training as an Aristocrat, a Gentleman, and an Officer Had Scarcely Prepared Him

6. Hood - Beware! Falling Ox

18.66 mb; 11m16s
http://www.mediafire.com/?mdyyedezdyz

Scavenger Hunts (I)

Katie - Deborah Aydt - 1980

• mole-colored Datsun
• hollyhocks
• Lavoris
• starter brassieres
• glazed eyes
• iron pills
  
• small green chunks of chile
  
• a stray bit of crust
  
• tart, cedary smell
• round-tipped scissors
• lurid iron-ons
• Jeno's Frozen Pizza
• a fresh, juicy grapefruit
• a cold, glittering rush
• a beautiful silk cord

Tom Swift and His G-Force Inverter - Victor Appleton II - 1968

• a hissing sound
• a coil of thin nylon rope
• Bud's smashed platform
• a portable ice bucket
• pistol-like weapons
• prime Texas steer
• a combined TV and telescope
• a few cosmetics
• a well-aimed punch
• Martabat's solar plexus
• a cushion of magnetic flux lines
• long, curving saber-sharp horns
• some interplanetary snooper
• non-antigravity pancakes
  

Dreamt

It's a brutally cold day; everything's icy, so my guess is February or an especially cold March. I'm running through the town of Potsdam, and this isn't that frustrating drowning-in-caramel type of dream running, but rather the really liberating kind where you take outrageously long strides and your jacket flaps behind you. I realize at some point that Lil Wayne is also bounding through the streets too, matching my pace ahead of me, and rapping/auto-tuning/whatever you care to call it all the while. He starts leaping from building to building on Main Street; I think he jumped from the roof of the movie theater over to the Clarkson Inn. The sky is barren white and the trees dark and spindly. I can see our breath.

With one last flailing jump, he's on top of Sergi's as seen from behind, near Videorama and the laundromat, where THINK POSITIVE is spraypainted on the brick. There's a crowd at this point, and he either tosses or lowers something down. It's the frozen-stiff body of a small girl, who I take to be his daughter. There's a note pinned to her lapel with a variety of medical information, and it explains that her heart has been removed and put on ice for use as a transplant. He's still up on the roof, grieving her death. Now a red and white picnic cooler is lowered down.

Somehow, Lil Wayne has performed the necessary surgery on his dead daughter to harvest her heart for an organ transplant.