Poetry...why not?

[Medesha]

I haven't written poetry in a long time but tonight I got the urge. My husband said my first one is "a good poem", and since he doesn't like poetry that's a high compliment.

The Best Poems

All the best poems
were written by me.
All the best poems
are about my life, my family, my loves.
The best poems make my heart remember
the good time and the bad times
and the beautiful times; that was not Keats
it was me, my truth and my beauty.
The poets were plagiarists all
Tennyson and Longfellow stole my thoughts
peeked into my soul, read behind my unborn eyes.
And that is my mother in the kitchen
my father working in the rain
every old man I have ever known or seen
my passionate husband beckoning me out of the woods
to live with him; that is not Walden,
it is the backyard behind the yellow house
it is the trees on the way to school
it is wide, yellow Alberta fields.

-A. E. Scott
01/09/04

[Medesha]

And a conversation after a reading of that poem led to a comment from my husband that inspired this one. ;-)

Rejection Letter

Dear Mrs. Scott,

It was with great interest that we read
your poem.
Though our readers found merit in it,
it does not suit our needs
at this time.

Or any time.

The editors at our publication feel
you must have dozed through English class.
Else your flagrant misuse of iambic pentameter
would have sent your teacher to the madhouse.

Did it escape your notice
that you used the word "yellow"
twice?

And the erasure marks clearly show
that you have written this poem
more than once.
It did not flow from your pen like water from a cleft rock.
You sweated.

If you are reading this letter
it means our assassins have failed us.
Hopefully the contact poison
will do the trick.
We have enclosed a bill
for your next of kin
to cover our expenses
to England
to dig up Shakespeare
and stop his spinning.

Yrs,

Editors.

-A.E. Scott
01/09/04

[Toptomcat]

BWAHAHAHAHAH!
I LOVE IT! ;D

[Zarni]

classic!

absolutely great. gave me quite a chuckle. and i can relate to it having recently been turned down a few times by editors.

very nice work.

[sonnetinkinston]

Hehehe! ;D

[Medesha]

36 Months Instead of 9

Because I am notawoman inside this
female form, I am not given
carte blanche to suffer, never the
recipient of sympathetic looks or
hand-patting. For a real woman must
always give, never take, me this
notawoman deserves nothing from life, as I
give no life. No swollen ankles, no
rebellious stomach, no frightened
private's ear for the officers' bloody stories;
no right to be selfish.

But my dear one, he
rubs my ankles anyway, he tucks
the blankets in around me and puts a video on.
Our one week out of four we celebrate
as happily as any expectant couple
the rebirth of our lives;
being who we are instead of
being who we are
supposed to be.

-me
Nov. 28/04

[Medesha]

To compensate for K Man's depressing Christmas story.

On Hearing The Clarinetists Play In Westlake Plaza

Remembering so suddenly the
years of smooth, cool, curved
shining black; insect
click of dry fingering; slivered
wooden tongue on my own tongue -
humming; padded cork dent on
my thumb; air in my gut up
my spine through
my throat down
the shaft out
the bell; low, trembling,
rich; I drop a dollar in the hat
and whisper "thanks"; one
nods "Merry Christmas" as I
walk away.

-A. E. Scott
Dec. 28/04

[K Man]

To compensate for K Man's depressing Christmas story.

Ouch...hey, some of us are entitled to have a loathing for Christmas right?

As for hearing your clarinets in Westlake Plaza...does this style of poetry have a specific name? It strikes me as odd - not bad mind you - just not what I'm used to.

Oh, and glad to have you back and I hope you had a Merry Christmas!

[Medesha]

Thanks, K Man! I'm not "back", per se, I'm making good use of the complimentary high-speed internet access in my hotel room. I'll be back in Seattle on Sunday.

As for the poem, I guess you'd call it blank verse. It's not a sonnet or any other type of formulaic poetry.

[Zarni]

cool, cool. hope you guys all had good new years and such, seasonal greetings to you all.

(my story gets published this month! )

i may post some new material up soon after my exams are over, i need some good critique on a few first drafts...

[Medesha]

Waiting For the Bus on the Mercer Island Bridge

When Dante wrote of Hell,
I think, sometimes, he must have dreamt the swell
of white-tipped surges on Puget Sound
not crashing waves but ripples that splash upon the ground
with solemn sighs.

All around, a gauze veil settles and plies, settles and plies
like cold smoke from ice-chip coals.
And Charon's muffled horn tolls across the bay;

We scramble for our oboli -
cold coins clutched in stiff fingers. I cry
to wait for me, not wanting to be left
a hundred years or more
on this northwest shore
waiting for the sun.

-A. E. Scott
Jan 25/05

[Medesha]

Love Poem for Papa

Papa, I was born too late
to know you the right way. Born
sitting in a mobile home on linoleum floors,
mezmerized by colour screen, crunching
candy-shelled Chiclets, wanting to grow up
a Barker's Beauty.

No tears in '61, my mother just eleven years old.
I imagine her hearing but not understanding;
the sorrow in her parents' eyes. Hard workers,
they understood war and hardship and
dust; they would have liked you, Papa,
bellied up to the bar with you for a drink.

No knowledge yet of me,
mild adolescence and tall bangs.
Biting through you in big chunks in university,
desperate to digest, but too soft and too
happy to understand. Only now, only after
love and lost dreams able to nibble,
sip, sentence by sentence, to drink and become
an uplifted, maudlin drunk.

Wondering now if you could ever have imagined
so many plastic children, and chick lit;
I'm sorry, Papa, sorry I didn't know
the smell of mud mixed with blood and gunpowder
or the sight of blue Spanish sky.
I was born too late to know you the right way.

But love does not need knowing.
So I will read and love and try to forget
I had to type you into the internet
to learn 1961.

-A. E. Scott
March 19/05

[Medesha]

I edit and rewrite my poems. Does that make me a horrible person? And why do I feel like it does? I have no problem editing my stories.

[K Man]

Editing anything NEVER makes you a horrible person Medesha. I think it was you that stated something to the effect that "A good writer is never satisfied with their work.."

It probably just feels different because poetry is mean to be more...'artsy' and Da Vinci didn't re-paint Mona Lisa a dozen times. Then again...maybe he did

[Toptomcat]

Let's see some haiku
They're fun, easy, short, and cool.
Somebody post one!