There is a "Poetry" category for this blog because, during some ambitious period when I was probably studying for the GRE Subject Exam in Literature, I thought I could entertain and enrich myself by musing a little here and there on poets and poems and poetic forms. However, other interests have proven squeakier.
Yesterday I had to take in my sick car, with its ickle engine light a'warbling so bright, to the dealership for repair. (Yes, the dealership. I don't "know a guy," and trial and error is unappealing in my statistical middle age.) As we entered the third, no, the fourth hour of waiting (of a projected six), I asked the service desk for a pen. Michael Palin's Sahara is fine reading, especially at $5 on the B&N clearance table, but it seemed some ink-n-callous composing on the back of an engine parts brochure would break the monotony. (Or the thinking about the $700 estimate.)
The freshmen recently made poetry books; one of the formats they could choose was this. Of course they all want to do free verse, or AABB rhyme when feeling structural, but you know me, straddling that academic seesaw between "because I said so" and "take charge of your own learning." I told them that it was far more important that they try something new than that they create anything readable, and they had to live with that. (Muahaha. Power!)
I'm intimately familiar with unreadable poetry because it's the only kind I know how to make. My gut reaction to almost every poem is "eh." I really have to read and reread and think to enjoy them, and then they're great and memorable, from Burns' louse (Cooties! Love It!) to cummings' lame balloonman (Puddle-wonderful!). But initially, no, few grab me, and I think that lack of poetic instinct is what makes me a poor poet myself.
Of course I write them anyway, sometimes as many one every two or three years.
So there I was yesterday, at the dealership, watching the Food Network with two eyes and listening to Scooby Doo with two ears because the louty parent in the play area had cranked it up so her son could hear it from across the showroom, and I thought, with nothing to do but comfort myself with lists of two-hour things I've survived in the past (some movies, the prime time Space Mountain queue, third and fourth period), that I should take my own advice and try writing a v*ll*n*ll*.
So I did, and this is it, or at least as close to the rules as I could remember after flushing poetry from my brain until next year. I share it only in the name of making blog fodder. (Also, I'm procrastinating on grading those poetry books.)
Because lazuli turtle* succumbed to locusts
From broiling this urban neon fog
Princely shamen now stir my focus,**
And I scribble wth la plume de ma cashier hostess,
Five hours deep into the service log
Because my lazuli turtle succumbed to locusts
And me not living near train nor bus
Must drag to altar this spraining cog
For princely shamen to stir my focus
All this because of desert dust
(And 30 miles of daily jog)
My lazuli turtle succumbed to locusts
At least we've avoided wrecks and rust
Or giving in to shiny new togs
While princely shamen stir my focus
I swear I hardly even cussed -
I think my mouth was too agog
Lazuli turtle succumbed to locusts,
And princely shamen must stir my focus.
* I drive a blue hatchback
** and it's a Ford Focus
*** and guess what? The car was done two hours early - as I was rereading this draft - and ended up being only $500. Lucky poem? Forward to seven of your friends before sundown - don't break the chain!
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