Free Write, Week 12 (make-up)

"Leonard Cohen Laughed, and It Was Good"

I talked to Leonard Cohen last night.
He didn't have much to say;
he lost his words during the storm.
He sat on the line in a pool of silence,
waiting like the great Buddha.
And I said, "Leonard, you know,
you're gonna have to talk if you call."
And he responded, "My dear friend,
I think that sounds a bit metaphorical."
And he laughed and laughed,
like a monk on Christmas vacation.

Free Write, Week 10 (make-up)

"You Will Forget My Name"

I.

After you praise me in your dreams,
you will forget my name.
I fought the good fight,
and now I wear a blue coat;
I sleep next to Mister Jones
and bathe myself
in modesty and slight regret.

My heart cries out for a cease-fire.

II.

I pushed a red wheelbarrow
through the rain and carried
the heavy words of a talking head
upon my broken back.

I floated down great rivers on a raft
carved out of English stone;
I fed the hungry piranhas,
and I made the sand snakes shiver.

III.

I wear a mask soaked in the blood
of a dying night.

My hear screams out for mercy.

I lie in my bed and as my flesh melts away,
I feel the weight of earth above me.
The stone that marks my bed remembers me
and the tilled soil remembers me,
but you will soon forget my name.

Free Write, Week 7 (make-up)

"Your eyes hazel, my miles"

I.  Strophe


Your eyes hazel, my miles
million miles, are yours
Yours are a hazel million miles,
Your eyes are a hazel
eyes are a miles,
Your eyes a million hazel

your boyfriend Do you say? Do I
wanna be you me you me
girl I be your love you
Hey, little be you say? Do
your boyfriend Sweet you babe? What be
little girl I be your babes? What

II.  Antistrophe


Others to others be and be
to be tasted, be swallowed, and
books swallowed, to be
to some chewed, to be
books digested and be

III.  Epode


death dies to wounds; weariness,
Love It replenishes It errors
natural replenish It weariness, withering,
death don't how to its
never betrays.  Illness and withering,
a natural dies, we dies how error dies
a death. Dies source. Blindness, we dies
of illness, replenish of tarnishing to its source.
It and illness never It of wounds; replenish dies
never dies death.  Dies blindness withering,
It death.  Its dies of and of
because we know of It and death.

Calisthenic, Week 12 (make-up)

from the imagining the unimaginable exercise on pp. 203-206 in Writing Poetry:

When I die, they will shatter every joint in my body and cut away each limb like I'm a Thanksgiving turkey whose legs are severed and served to the children who sit at a table far in the corner where no one can hear each son and each daughter argue over who gets the seat at the head of their miniature table.

When I die, they will not lock me away in a wooden prison beneath the soles of pastors' shoes and widows' bent knees, no, they will burn every pound of my flesh until I melt into putty then burn to ash like a home that succumbs to a great fire that will not extinguish before the morning of its funeral.

[not finished]

Calisthenic, Week 11 (make-up)

from the in-class "Playing with Blocks" exercise:

In post-collapse Russia,
shoes are no longer a commodity;
whiskey and gin ads reflect against the sunglasses of men
who once pinched the green out of leaves and
measured the dead in wheelbarrows.
No longer do they sew their voices into our ears.
These men now creep about along the edge of a shadow;
they once created whining dogs,
now they create jigsaw puzzles.

Calisthenic, Week 9 (make-up)

from the documentary lyric exercise on pp. 211-214 in Writing Poetry.

"I Commit My Spirit"

CBGB, 1974.  They etch punk rock
into the marquee moon with electricity
and a hey-ho.  Richard Hell and Tom
Verlaine inject Patti Smith and Lenny
Kaye with a double shot of protopunk,
which they will gladly inject into the
lanky arms of high-schoolers in 1975,
like a saint with an electric syringe.

CBGB, 2006.  Patti Smith grabs the mic
and belts a sermon--an Elegie.  The club
is her Mount; Hilly is the sovereign, the
almighty.  She gives the last rites--
"Johnny, Joey, and Dee Dee Ramone."
The baptism commences, the crucifixion
completes. CBGB, 33.

Calisthenic, Week 7 (make-up)

from the ekphrasis exercise on pp. 208-211 of Writing Poetry:


"Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962"

Twenty-five stamps of gold, blue, and violet,
Twenty-five stamps of black and white

Twenty-five stamps of oranges in a lemon tree,
Twenty-five stamps of smeared ink on old newspaper

Twenty-five stamps of Niagara, 1953,
Twenty-five stamps of Brentwood, 1962

Twenty-five stamps of citrus touch,
Twenty-five stamps of ash-dust blindness

Twenty-five stamps of peach tones and papaya shades,
Twenty-five stamps of midnight purple and bourbon camellia

Twenty-five stamps of Marilyn Monroe,
Twenty-five stamps of Norma Jean Baker

Calisthenic, Week 4 (make-up)

from the lexical accretion exercise on page 208 in Writing Poetry:

"I Don't Wanna Be"

I don't wanna be your bank broker
I don't wanna be your oyster shucker
I don't wanna be your pearl grinder

I don't wanna be your diamond slave
I don't wanna be your almond.  Babe
I don't wanna be your Joey Ramone

As you want it shown.  I wanna be
Flown into a ditch and peppered in
your itch.  Your boyfriend, penned

to a record--skip and not scratch.


* This is intended to be a play on the famed Ramones song "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend"

Junkyard Quotes 1-4, Week 9 (make-up)

"The rain's really starting now." (friend on Facebook)

"My God!  What have I done?" (Talking Heads, "Once in a Lifetime")

"Are we going to die?"  (cousin during storm)

"What color is black?"  (friend's 3-year-old daughter)

Junkyard Quotes 1-4, Week 12 (make-up)

"This is a moment I've dreaded.  I wish I could do this forever.  I can't, though, but I'm not retiring.  Writers don't retire, and I'll always be a writer."  (Andy Rooney)

"We were inspired to buy a gong because Keith Moon had a gong."  (student, 10, from the School of Rock)

"Oh a false clock tries to tick out my time

to disgrace, distract, and bother me,

and the dirt of gossip blows into my face,

and the dust of rumors covers me,

but if the arrow is straight

and the point is slick,

it can pierce through dust no matter how thick.

So I'll make my stand

and remain as I am

and bid thee farewell and not give a damn."  (Bob Dylan, "Restless Farewell")

"Why are you here in this time?"  (from Misfits)