The Times

Sixty-seven students dead in Chicago.

Samantha is too young to keep her shoes tied.
She drags them up the concrete bricks,
climbs using the bottom rung of the handrail.
Her sign hangs and slopes like her open mouth
at the tedious protest her mother brought her to.

Violence in Guinea!: 157
“More troops!” says McCain.
In New York there is an election runoff.

Susan sits behind a desk labeled
"info" with a piece of scotch tape.
She’s been working the polls.
Her nametag is clipped like a lapel pin
to her star spangled sweater.

A bomb in Iraq!: 9
“More troops?” says America.
Sixty-seven children dead in Chicago.

But it's not revelation, just statistics,
and Chicago is analyzing them, wondering:
can they save Samantha from her city?

Gangs in Chicago!: 67
“More troops.” says Obama.
In New York John Lin is celebrating.

On September 29th, eight in a hundred
eligible liabilities came to vote again.
2% of 8,000,000 claimed a stake in their city.

Only 56 were killed by Guinean soldiers,
at least according to the Guinean government.

Just 9 people died when a bomb exploded
in the middle of an Iraqi marketplace.

A mere 67 dead in Chicago
during a school year when over 500 were shot.

“Slow day, huh?” says the only voter to Susan.
“Don't shoot. I want to grow up,” says Samantha’s sign.

Not much different here. Turns out it didn't need to be coherent to have an unexpected power.

Tag

There is no time. The sun hangs.
Double-knotted sneakers etch
rivers and tributaries
into the boys' zigzag trail.

They escape behind the school
as parking lots empty, and
flee to the meadow to play.
Here, the poppies are taller.

Even the towering elms
and sycamore horizon,
is hidden. Their boughs are dark
this time of day, suggesting.

But they would rather play, run
by superfluous bridges
of neat cut pine, stripped, treated,
and closely latched together.

Soon the meadow, the poppies,
the wild daisies, the long necked
bells, and bright chrysanthemums
will trim back, and everything

will be overtaken by
the whiteness of winter storms,
and then winter’s muddy melt
So each day they keep running.

Each day a little faster
underneath the afternoon
sun as morning lessons cling
like a muddy step, linger,

permeate double-knotted
sneakers, before they catch up.

'Tag' is now a poem that embodies the spirit of the place I originally wrote about. It moves away from indifference, and simply appreciates a simple landscape. The world is spinning, even as the there are protests in Chicago, even as beautiful pigs are slaughtered and people wake up to the sound of trains to smoke an existential cigarette, but boys run through a meadow valuing something greater than complacency. It is my most hopeful poem, my least cynical poem, and coincidentally maybe my best.

If I could go back in time, I'd have a portfolio filled with better poems.

Optimism

I leaned over and whispered to her,
sweetheart, we're gonna fall down now.

And sure enough we did.
Now I’m haunted by a coconut monkey with bifocals.
We couldn't even remember the moment we found it.

It just sits on a dresser like a race number
slipping off the trail, or a mancala stone;
a soul; something molten and unburied.
Steam-punk heirlooms and ornate woodchips
with a hint of periwinkle blue sneaking over torn edges;
a rock not even heavy enough for a paper weight.

We weren't superstitious or anything;
we just held onto it, put it in a bag,
now it's the only thing left we didn't throw away.

So we are going over numbers again
with optimism
and chagrin.

It took five dives to get down there
all to find it was 8,000 pounds.
A number pinned to a page,
a blocked thirteen, black and ominous.
Yo-yos with knots and fragments of pottery,
interesting pieces of ancient garbage,

but, they have no sentimental value at all.
They say violins are anthropomorphic,
but ours never worked.

It had a bad bridge,
but how could we throw out the heart?

So, I'm reading over my poetry portfolio, you know, the one I handed in? Well, it's not exactly good or anything. I can't be too surprised, I wasn't exactly buoyed in reality at the time. The drifting tone, complete lack of flow, bad syntax, and even spelling errors are quite egregious for the class' expectations. So it goes, but I'll post the best ones here as I clean them up a little.

While it was always a poem about relationships, now it has some direction to it. It’s a sad poem, but yet it fights the apathetic tone most of my poems seem to have, ultimately finding some sort of value in something. Well, go figure love would be the topic to fight such a habit.