Found Objects

[sadie_cocopuff]

I've been organizing my computer files in the past few days. It's extremely soothing. I read articles about how the hierarchical file structure is becoming obsolete, but I can't imagine how I would function without it. In any case, while organizing and moving things around, I found a bunch of old poetry, some of which I am posting here.

This one was written as a final creative project for my Dystopian Fiction class at Duke TIP, summer 2004, right after sophomore year. The title (in Latin, because I was very pretentious at 15, and also we'd read a lot of Donne sophomore year) means "books and bodies."

libri et corpora

I

In “sunny Spain” the sun shone not for those
Whose fortunes saw them chained in dungeons dank.
Their lives, they felt, were drawing to a close
As each day, dark as night, their spirits sank.
As brawny limbs grew weak and hair grew lank,
They waited, watched, and prayed for one more day.
Despite the cold, the rats, the clothes that stank,
Their love for life lived on, did not decay.
Again ‘twas faith that stole their lives away;
Inquisitors would put them to the test.
No matter how they might protest and pray,
Undoubtedly they’d perish with the rest.
As vicious flame on body took its toll,
With each one died a heart, a mind, a soul.

II

Unsullied, pure, snow-white within each heart,
Their faith was new, their zeal was fresh and strong.
Awash with righteousness, each did his part
To rid the world of sin, th’unholy throng
To baptize with the Spirit’s grace. “All wrong,”
They cried, “We will defeat through Christ the Lord,
All heresy destroy!” This was their song.
With God their shield and tongue of flame their sword,
Their mission: to uproot the pagan word.
So Plato, Aristotle, Socrates
Were burned with those whose books they tried to hoard.
Those Christians, staunch and true, ignored their pleas.
As fire the parched and brittle pages sought,
With each one burned a mind, a word, a thought.


III

On English soil in centuries far past
A queen held court arrayed in blood and fear,
And still in lore for ages more shall last,
For her name, Bloody Mary, all shall hear.
Her Catholic faith to her heart was so near
That other faiths she would not let nor leave.
As faith her very sister not as dear;
For others lesser born she did not grieve.
Hair shorn, arrayed in white on doomsday eve
Did many’a blessed martyr kneel and weep
To pray that God their humble souls receive
While Mary lay in undisturbèd sleep.
As vicious flame on body took its toll,
With each one died a heart, a mind, a soul.

IV

A new regime, a leader fierce and keen
With vision to unite a fallen land;
They’d felt war’s bitter yoke, oppressive, mean,
Their spirit broken by an enemy hand.
But now this man their gutt’ring flames had fanned.
Their Fuhrer gave them hope and strength anew.
They gladly executed each demand;
At first it seemed no trial at all to do.
But then his rule was doubted by a few,
For his dominion did not seem so kind.
His hate for things “un-German” quickly grew
And now nowhere could many books one find.
As fire the parched and brittle pages sought,
With each one burned a mind, a word, a thought.


V

America, a land where they’d be free,
New life, new hope to worship as they would.
But once again religion made them flee:
Those women, innocent, as witches stood
Condemned to death before they ever could
Defend their humble lived with protest vain,
For none believed their hearts could yet be good,
And no façade of justice did they feign.
And so one morning bleak that threatened rain,
The gathered townsfolk watched with righteous eyes,
Rejoiced in wrath, unmindful of the pain
They caused to those poor waifs, unheeding sighs.
As vicious flame on body took its toll,
With each one died a heart, a mind, a soul.

VI

“The modern day’s enlightened!” we proclaim,
But still to fears of ancient times we cling,
And find at heart our doubts are still the same:
The unknown dark, a strange and troubling thing.
New books, old thoughts, the same ideas to bring;
Suspicious minds, more prone to hate and fear.
Our open-mindedness has taken wing,
And now “old values” seem to us more dear.
“The devil’s work!” we cry for all to hear.
“Our children’s minds are pure, let none profane!”
These zealous words ring true in many’an ear,
For fantasy is true religion’s bane.
As fire the parched and brittle pages sought,
With each one burned a mind, a word, a thought.

 

The next two I'm throwing in for entertainment value -- we had to do this horrible vocabulary book called "Wordly Wise" all the way through middle and high school, and for each chapter we had to write a paragraph using some prescribed number of vocab words. In order to make it less dull, I decided to go for poems instead of paragraphs (as will likely be obvious, bold words are the vocabulary words). Both of these are from September of senior year.

 

 

Apologia of a Monster

 

‘Neath the undulant waters of the Nile

Dwells a sleeping crocodile.

This verse shall be her commendation,

Though her crimes I do not sanction.

Let not her acts redound on me,
The apotheosis of virtuosity.
My praise, effusive, should not go
To validate the monstrosity of this virago;

If what I offer is not an encomium,
Perhaps, instead, a deserved opprobrium
Forgive me all this circumlocution –
Now begins the true elocution:

Amidst the profusion of glossy reeds
In a pleasant sanctuary by the river
Is found an excrescence, grown of foul seeds,
That makes the most valorous men to quiver.

A monster to Hydra in size equivalent,
Its air an accretion of malice and hate;
Each tooth a sharp and deadly crescent,
Unseen until a moment too late.

A gleam of red suffuses each eye
And claws besides teeth seem redundancy,
But see her kill once and you’ll never ask why;
Confronting both would be lunacy.

A beast so deadly should be swiftly done in
(Forgive my colloquial turn of phrase).
But sacrilege does not much support win,
And the sacrosanct does not garner much praise.

What I intimate in my loquacious way
Was a prevalent view in the Nile at that time:
The crocodile goddess is one to obey.
It’s mandatory; to rebel is a crime.

But for some virility proved too much –
The oligarchy, a triumvirate proud
Would not let the beast their authority touch,
So they issued a mandate to the gathered crowd:

“Slay the crocodile swiftly!” was the ultimatum,
Though the people to remand it did desire.
The rulers would allow no referendum
And urged them on with fury and fire.

The crowd diffused and a few brave souls
Who could overcome their neurosis of water
Prepared themselves to brave the shoals,
Just as the day was getting hotter.

The triumvirate in the atrium held court,
Marking the passage of each increment of time.
A second to them could not seem short,
But they whiled it away making a rhyme.

Meanwhile the searchers, as the day grew dim,
Drew nearer to the beast’s resting place.
The looks they threw each other were grim
But they strode onward pace by pace.

The crocodile reared and flashed her claws,
A look of warning in each beady eye,
But they paid no heed to her fearsome jaws;
They drew their swords and raised them high.

The monster roared, a mighty sound;
The men drew back, but it was too late.
In the blink of an eye they were all of them drowned
In the flood she called forth them to inundate.

Thwarted were the rulers in their mighty hall,
For they were no match for a will divine.
They knew not another expedition to call,
But left the beast on the unfortunates to dine.

A terror indeed, so many souls to slay,
But in defense of herself is it so great a crime?
My words I hope you will heed on this day;
The apologia of a monster – a tale of its time.

Hydroponic Rose
If I could transcend these words
That circumscribe the immensity of my feeling,
Of which these words are but a simulacrum,

If I could surpass this needless verbiage
That attenuates the meaning in my eyes,
Of which your grasp can be but tenuous,

I would tell you of a dimension beyond your understanding,
Not mensurable but infinite,
Commensurate to heaven itself.

Man cannot assimilate it;
The ego proscribes the id from breaking free,
An ascendancy whose tenure is as old as time.

This is the dimension that we simulate
In the proverb and the verse,
In the inscription on a lover’s charm,

In the verbosity of the eager paramour
Whose words, verbatim, seem to condescend
To absolve the frailty of mere speech.

None of this can express what I feel;
My heartbeats could propel a hydroelectric mill
And my pulse is a hydraulic pump,

Forcing the blood to my fingertips,
Bringing the dissolution of my composure,
No matter my resolve.

No extenuating circumstances now.
This problem isn’t soluble –
I’m the descendant of a flawed race.

I have no hubris; I know I’m a victim.
I’ve fallen prey to your charisma;
I know the trauma that’s in store.

Aphrodite has stolen the aegis –
Libido is running wild.
The conscription of my heart is irreversible.

These dehydrated lines, this wilted verse,
Are a poor approximation of my passion;
An artificial simile –

A hydroponic rose.

 

 

And this last one I wrote in a more-or-less serious manner, the spring of senior year. I never could figure out what I wanted the punctuation to do, so I left it out entirely.

Autumn Laughter

Laughter sparkles on the autumn air
Beneath the willow tree
Carefree lies the young girl there
A maiden blithe with golden hair
The sky above is not so fair
Its smiles are not so free

Quiet the step as a man draws near
A shepherd poor but gay
A song floats to his listening ear
A ballad sweet for the woods to hear
From a voice that never has known a tear
Nor had aught but a kind word to say

A shadow falls on the maiden’s face
Her glance turns up with joy
She leaps to her feet with fluid grace
Into her lover’s arms to race
The song is gone without a trace
As her lips find another employ

Laughter lingers on the winter air
Beneath the barren tree
Mysterious echoes the memory there
Of the kisses and songs two lovers share
But the snow is thick and the branches bare
And none remain to see