o00ranges!! = } who am I?

WHO AM I?
I am a person in hiding! hiding her fear and sorrows
I am a sister hiding her feelings
I am a daughter acting a fool
I am a friend with no friends
I am a student who tries to hard
I am the person sitting next to you
Do you care?
I am a person in hiding, hiding her fear and sorrows.
I am the person falling deep into a hole, coiled up and
hanging like a thread, hanging and just waiting too..
DROP!
Drop, deep and climb back up and want everything
to be how it used to be, back to where I used to be happy,
Back to where I didn't worry so much, back to knowing how to feel,
Back to knowing how to care..
Back to being me..
+ } = P"

A Sonnet for Today

Chris wrote a sonnet the other day and got me thinking about the rules for what is and is not a sonnet, and how they might be broken, bent, or otherwise reinvented. This is a sonnet by Ted Berrigan, which aside from being 12 lines long has little in common with the Shakespearean model. Berrigan was actually born in our very own Providence, and later became associated with the New York School of poetry. Here's the Wikipedia article on him if you'd like to know more.

SONNET 34

Time flies by like a great whale
And I find my hand grows stale at the throttle
Of my many faceted and fake appearance
Who bucks and spouts by detour under the sheets
Hollow portals of solid appearance
Movies are poems, a holy bible, the great mother to us
People go by in the fragrant day
Accelerate softly my blood
But blood is still blood and tall as a mountain blood
Behind me green rubber grows, feet walk
In wet water, and dusty heads grow wide
Padré, Father, or fat old man, as you will,
I am afraid to succeed, afraid to fail,
Tell me now, again, who I am

–Ted Berrigan

Here is one of the "exquisite poems" we wrote today. The technique was simple: each person (there were four of us) wrote two lines, folded the paper so that only the second line was visible, and handed it to the next person who would do the same thing. We kept going until we filled the paper. The theme was motion, although we all stuck to that pretty loosely. Most of the motion came from writing and passing the paper along as quickly as possible, since we are doing for at once. Rapid-fire writing.

They all came out pretty awesome. I think this one's my favorite.

The summers breeze going through my fingers
smelling of the new season, while it still lingers
crunching down pulling forward
swiftly without effort transporting
everyone who was in the room to Canada, where they immediately began
singing at the top of their lungs. The birds in the trees
looked up, startled. They’d never heard anything like it
like words unread or written
something you would think was probably forbidden
the squelching of boots obviously on the ground
feet creeping anxiously
forward… then stopping abruptly.
The collision sounded like rain would
if rain fell all at once
I’d live my last moments
and breathe my last few breaths
my chest heaving up and down
such a simple motion
makes everyone stop and watch
with their eyes darting back and forth.
It looked like suns colliding.
my eyes could not bear what was happening
souls evaporating into thin air,
slowly reaching higher and higher
becoming tiny invisible wisps of life.

- By Legend, Jamie, Oliver and mary

New Urban Writes Kick Off

This blog will very soon be home to a collection of poems, stories, plays and other creative works by the students of new urban arts. Anyone can post! If you'd like to learn how, email me (mary wilson at gmail dot com) or just ask me when you see me. And feel free to post non-original work too, like favorite poems, images or stories, or links to things (writing/art related) you think we should all check out. Ok great! Let the posting begin.