Poetry
"Ode to the Creative Thought Process"
A perfect sonnet's hard for me to find--
They're twice as bad to write. I struggle for
A word to ease the iambs' flow: one kind
A subject--that I also cannot get!
To life? To love? To happiness? To death?
Should angst pervade, or should--a cigarette?
Whichever of the two would catch my breath--
That didnt even make some sense! And rhymes--
They keep me up so late at night, I scream--
Wake everyone. "I'm all out of time!"
I'd weep. They'd stare. And then I'd dream
Up worlds where sonnets are common as the grass.
Oh, why can't that new world include my class?
"Tisiphone"
Her eyes! so blue as winter's shadow, gleam
With intellectual light--Her hair! as dark
As midnight's sky will haunt me in my dreams
Tonight. Her face so pale will leave its mark.
Her hands! that knobble like an old oak's boughs
Do twist around my neck, while softly Time
Absconds, so I may once again avow
The same few words I lay to the sublime:
"Forgive me Father. I have sinned, have done
A wicked deed. My wife lays dead at my
Own hands, and in my sleep she has begun
To kill me, too, with laughs of pleasure wry."
But I awake, no comfort had. I weep
For her. The world knows not my guilty sleep.
"A Solitary Lass' Upheaval"
I wear disguises all the time to hide My true, beloved thoughts; you think I'm plain--I'm average but I'm strong as strong inside
And I won't fit your stereotypes, won't stain
Myself to be anyone but me. Crane
Your neck and watch me fly. My voice is loud
But yet unheard. I'll spare myself the pain
Of your reality. My mind, endowed
With magic, myst'ry, and I wont be cowed
Into conforming to your standards of
Such boringness. I hate the box allowed
For me. I must break out and catch a dove
For me. Now let me go and blaze my trail.
I swear that I will stand up if I fail.
"Time's Cornet Rasp"
Oh how I love Horatio! He's loy-
Al, strong, and true. His sailing skills have yet
No match. His hair is curly, windtossed, unset.
His eyes are soft and puppy brown, a joy
To see, behold--so pretty!--what a boy.
He rose through ranks from bottom to top. Let
Me tell of his birth, common and low. Yet
He grew to great manhood, was brave and good.
And all you've heard of him is right; he went
From fears of heights to captain as he should.
His beauty was not a chance event
And women did take notice of it, they would
The landlord's daughter, Maria, she did.
And when he asked to wed, she took his bid.
(Lucky wench...)
The first of these is the most recently written of my sonnets, for AP Lit. I was absolutely drained of ideas at that point, especially sonnet ideas--and when one has nothing to say, one can only write about having nothing to say.
The other three were all for Junior Lit, and I didn't enjoy writing them. Lie--actually, I liked writing "Tisiphone" (named for one of the three Greek furies; Tisiphone is the one that drives people mad) because I thought the idea was interesting. I had to write a sonnet in each of the three styles, though, and so I wasn't so interested in the other two. "A Solitary Lass' Upheaval" began as a sonnet-ized form of Superchic[k]'s "One Girl Revolution." "Time's Cornet Rasp" is a relatively direct translation of Horatio Hornblower's name. I thought it sounded a little more dignified than "Ode to His Hhhotness, Horatio Hornblower."