Villanelle for English 3440

Two/Three Matches

The grass is greener where you water it,

yet bone-dry grass cannot be healthy now.

A burnt out match cannot again be lit.

You are already gone, you piece of shit;

I’m left alone to ponder on our vow.

The grass is greener where you water it.

I told myself a lie and let it sit

upon your lips.  I often marvel how

a burnt out match cannot again be lit.

Another comes along who seems to fit

the space you once took up in me somehow.

The grass is greener where you water it.

Both you and he have left me feeling hit

with bams! and bangs! and one tremendous pow!

A burnt out match cannot again be lit.

I want the flame to burn inside the pit,

but fear that you’ve forgotten how to wow.

The grass is greener where you water it.

A burnt out match cannot again be lit.

Anti-Love Poem for English 3440

Nothing

You stand, showering.

Naked.  A scarecrow

with no crows to scare,

no crops to protect.

You wash your hair

and tighten tired eyes against

the steady barrage of

shampoo threatening to blind you,

if only for a stinging second,

and you consider letting it.

As I wash you vigorously,

sponge in hand,

your raw skin bleeds.

You do not notice so

I keep on scrubbing,

too scared to stop.

Three-Item Poem for English 3440

For this assignment I had to write a poem using three things: red, hippopotamus and whiteout.

Red

She had painted the room.

Like her cheeks would flush

in the cold, or like the

color of her favorite scarf.

Her lipstick still stained

on his coffee mug.

The mug washed clean,

the scarf returned,

her cheeks no longer his.

But the walls—

the walls remained,

as blatant as a

hippopotamus

rising from the mud

under an African sun.

Clay dripping

from its mighty legs

like drops of

nail polish on the sheets

of a once-shared bed.

She had painted the room.

White paint could not conceal it

or erase it like liquid paper,

correcting all the times

she wrote “I love you”

and didn't mean it.

Language Poem for English 3440

First

Touch-tipped fingers fall

touchily on thighs, pleasure-

points, elbow-joints.  Smooth

raking.  Hungry

thirst.  Peel a strip.

Then another bite of

banana.  Taste of flesh.

White and unrelenting.

Yielding away like falling

dominoes, black dots on white

faces, clicking and clacking

and then—yes.

Persona Poem for English 3440

Helpmeet

I only winced a little

when God ripped you

from my side, bloody

and swift, leaving a

yawning hollow.

I watched as you explored

your new body;

a butterfly spreading

her wings and I the

abandoned cocoon.

But then you smiled with

fruit juice dripping

from the corner of your

apple lips, your mouth a

yawning hollow

where I could see our bleak

future.  I cried and, in my

fallen state, tore off

your wings and crippled

the both of us.

Found Poem for English 3440

3.5 Billion Years
(from a Zales catalog promoting the Celebration Diamond)

Nature creates beauty.

Beauty explodes with pride.

Pride took so long in making

man—half the original brilliance

of nature—and beauty is lost.

Poem in the Negative for English 3440

Wishes

It's not in the vast expanse
or darkness kissing the white
luminescence of winter snow
nor in the smoky puff
of laughter; not the
lungs filled with cold or
girls resembling flamingos
with long stilettoed legs
and bright, warm coats above,
disappearing into pubs.

It's not in the rings left
by martini glasses and beer
bottles nor in the lonely
olive thoughtlessly swept
away by a waitress's
gin-soaked hand, the same
hand that sweetly wipes
away an eyelash from
her child's sleeping cheek
—a wish waiting to be granted.

She watches it float down,
lost in cream carpet,
and somehow she knows.