Hurricane - Chris Hart

A locked dorm
-For our own safety-
Is where we will weather
Whether we want to or not.

The winds of change blow
And whip outside my window,
Reminding me that this year
Will be like no other before it.

Sores - Chris Hart

The sores on the bottom of my feet,
Burst from long hours of learning
Are good reminders that nothing
Worth doing is easy.

As I bandage a blister,
I remind myself that for many,
These are not marks of learning,
Or signs of satisfaction,
But the daily scars of a life hard lived.

Satisfaction - Chris Hart

the wonderful weight
of an eyelid long overdue
slamming its foot down
declaring sleep

the sink of a head
into a pillow
beckoning sleep
immediate and deep

Packing - Chris Hart

Every square inch matters
when packing.
Packing in the hopes,
the fears, the clothes,
the aspirations
of another year.

Unpack them
into something brilliant.
And when finished,
pack up your bags once more,
filling them with the
realizations of your dreams.

Cat - Chris Hart

The shuddering, vibrating
Warm lump
In my lap is a dear friend.

Rubbing headbutts, paws kneading,
Big cat
Shows me that he likes me.

Or at least that I feed him
Daily
And scratch his belly

When he flops over, asking
Pleading
That I shower him with attention.

I'm okay with that.
Happy
Cats are the best cats.

Sunburn - Chris Hart

Every movement brings upon me
A scorching sweep of fire.
It's as if I am enthralled
In my own funeral pyre.

Even with mighty SPF white kid,
Though I try, and try, and try,
I'm left with one lesson, one word, today,
Reapply, reapply, reapply.


Six Flags was great fun today, but seriously, my sunblock did nothing and now I'm a lobster and in burning pain.  Welp!  Lessons reminded: reapply.

Beatlemania - Chris Hart

Girl, act naturally.

Every little thing,

Crying, waiting, hoping,

Let it be, little child.

Loving you, real love,

That means a lot.

From me to you, don't ever change.

You like me too much, woman.

It's only love?  It's all too much.

Another girl can't buy me love,

How do you do it?

I call your name.

No reply.  Misery.

Oh! Darling, slow down,

Because chains come together,

Hold me tight.

I lost my little girl.

I need you.

I, me, mine,

I feel...fine.

Hello,

Goodbye.

P.S. I love you

Thinking of Demetri Martin's beer bottle poem, I wanted to try my own "found" poetry.  Rather than a beer bottle, or a book cover, I decided to limit myself to the titles of Beatles songs.  The resulting poem is a bit clunky, but overall, tells a neat little story of a man forsaken by his love.

Unsurprisingly, I noticed that the majority of the titles were love themed, so this forced me into a similar theme for the poem.  I could have tried to break away from that, but it felt wrong to fight the flow of narrative logic in this case.  I was free with punctuation, which allowed me to color some of the titles in ways other than their original context, which I felt was necessary.

My main worry with this poem was that the song titles would feel too obvious, and stick out too much, which is why I tried to avoid terse statements.  The fourth and fifth stanzas are riddled with unfortunately short passages, though I think they still work.  By that late stage in the poem, the tone is set firmly enough that the inherent novelty of song titles being the means of composition do not jump out so much as they might have earlier in the poem.  I also was able to use a strategic rhyme at the end of the poem, as I lauded Seamus Heaney for doing in "Mid-Term Break" and I think it's rather nice.  I couldn't resist tagging "P.S. I love you" on to the end.  I'm pleased that I managed to subvert the phrase "P.S. I Love You" from its original peppy, happy tone to a grueling, agonizing admission.

Ropartz Piece in Eb Minor - Chris Hart

When Keats wrote, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever"
I do not think he had a trombone in mind.
That's alright, I forgive him.

A golden glint of movement, sliding
Into sound, pure rose-brass sound,
Baubles of delight, suspended in air.

Forever a joy, liquid gold from my horn
Fills me with the glow of eternal satisfaction,
The satisfaction of knowing

There can be beauty, enveloping
Warming beauty, that, sounding, gloriously sounding,
Fills the air, and for a short while, is reality.


Looking through a book of Keats I had lying nearby, I read the famous first line of his "Endymion" and was struck by the sentiment that beauty is always a joy.  I agree, and tried to think of beautiful things to write about.  It was then that I realized that I was already listening to something that will forever be a joy: a favorite trombone piece of mine, Guy Ropartz's "Piece in Eb Minor for Trombone and Piano."

In the language of the poem, I tried to capture what I feel is the essence of a trombone's romantic, expressive side: warm tone, liquid smoothness, and great emotive and expressive capability.  I wanted the reader to feel a warm glow, like being in a womb of golden liquid sound.  I love the feeling of playing the piece I had in mind, and I tried to convey that love in writing.  Enjoy!

A Sketch - Chris Hart

Partially penciled lines
Outline leisure hours
Spent with friends
And pencils.

Rough edges, repeatedly rubbed
To shade and blur
Obscure half-finished ideas
Heroes and villains
Whose battles will have to wait.

But rather than unfinished
These sketches are
Potential embodied.
It's not too late for them
To be anything they want to be.


I noticed some old sketch books of mine sitting around, and flipped through them.  My favorite part of sketching is that if what I'm drawing isn't holding my attention, I can just leave it a wonderful, weird, wacky, unfinished things.  It's fun to look back through them.

I don't think I quite managed to capture that in the poem.  I wanted to reflect the uncertain lines of a sketch, and its somewhat aloof qualities.  I'm not so sure I did, but I tried.  I also wanted to reflect the bizarre attraction and majesty of an unfinished thing.  I'd write more, but I really want to sketch now.

On Rediscovering An Old Calendar - Chris Hart

Old, forgotten calendars reveal
New insights about my former self.
Margin notes, furiously scrawled,
Remind me to remember things
Which I strangely did not write down.
That's one thing that hasn't changed,
My brilliant organization skills.

Flipping back in time
Through my old calendars
Is seeing all of my insecurities
Hopes and fears
Laid bare to the neat lines
Of a helpful schedule planner.

If only I could know
What my current calendar
Reflects about me.
All I know now
Is that I have work tomorrow:
It says so on the calendar.


This poem was half composed as a note on my phone, which I scrawled down after flipping through a few old planners I found in my room.  It's strange to look back on the things I thought were important enough to remind myself of.  I saw a lot of nervous energy in those entries, and a lot of un-vented aggression.  It's an interesting retrospective, so I tried to say something about that without disclosing the exact contents of past entries.

The notes on the calendars do not matter so much, for the sake of the poem, as the fact that there are notes on the calendar.  That I felt the need to remind myself of something gives me some insight into my state of mind.  I remember a friend telling me once that looking through her old diaries, if there were spans were she didn't write anything down, she knows that it was a time when she was deluding herself into thinking she didn't have anything to worry about.  The absence of entries showed her that things in that time period weren't peachy keen.  For me, it's somewhat opposite.  If I'm taking the time to write something down, it usually means that I have some sort of strong feeling that I am unsure of how to categorize.  And so, I neatly put it into a schedule.  Problem solved?  Not at all, but looking back, it seems I may have thought that way.

I regret that, in finishing this poem, that I didn't choose to adopt a rhyme scheme.  I find the result somewhat bland, without any interesting aural functions.  I tried to get by on an aloof tone, though I hardly think that cuts it for poetry.  I tried to keep the internal sounds of the line contrasting and fun to speak, though I don't know if I succeeded fully.  Maybe the central idea isn't strong enough to fit a strong formal structure.  Either way, it's an experiment, and success or failure, it can be nothing unless it's shared.

Parodic Poems - Chris Hart

This post requires a bit of a preface.  When I'm writing a paper, and it's late into the night on the last day, whether I be finishing the last few pages, or editing, or revising, I usually need to find a way to distract myself.  When I start feeling burnt out, I like to take a break, and one way I do that is to write a parodic poem, usually on the subject of my paper.  I apologize if these hold little humor value for you, dear reader.  They require either a knowledge of the original poem, or of the particular class I was in, as both of the following examples reference professors at my school.  Either way, I hope you find some enjoyment in them!  Following are two examples of my procrastination poetry:

A Parody on Milton's Sonnet XIX:
When I consider how my time is spent,
Ere half my days, in this lib'ry big, bright,
And that one paper which is death to write
Lodged with me useless, though my mind more bent
To serve therewith Prof. Morse, and to present
My true paper, lest he returning chide,
"Doth I exact day-labor, night denied?"
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent
That murmur soon replies: "Morse doth need not
Your insufficient paper.  He who best
Revise well his writ, serve him best.  His might
Is Kingly; students at his bidding jot
And work all night and day without rest;
They also serve who only sit and write."

Writing a parody on Milton's Sonnet XIX, which I believe I shared in an earlier post, was fun, because I was forced to work within the rhyming and metrical structure of a sonnet, while still working to deliver a humorous message about how I was up all night working on a paper for my professor, Prof. Morse.  I showed him this poem, and he thought it was hilarious.  You, reader, may find it somewhat less so, since Milton is not your career, and you aren't directly referenced as having kingly might.  Either way, the poem stands on its own as a functional, if uninteresting sonnet.  I kept much of Milton's language intact, sometimes even whole lines, because I was able to work them into a coherent parodic narrative.

Parodic Prologue to the Canterbury Tales:
Wan hem clepe Kee with his breo sote
We scolers of bokes hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every-wight in swich trauail,
Of which vertu engendred is the weyle;
Whan Kee eek with his stronge warke
Inspired hath in every scoler irke
And frustir, al-wat the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
We slepen nan the night, with open ye-
So priketh hem James in our corages-
Than longen we to gooon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes,
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Worceste to ouren endes we wende,
A holy blisful reste for to seke,
That wille us holpen, encombred seke.


Writing a parody of the introduction to the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales presented three unique challenges:
1)  The General Prologue's introduction is perhaps the most well known 18 line chunk of poetry in the English language.  So many people are familiar with it, even in its Middle English format, and in translation, that a parody of it must keep a general feeling of the original intact, so that its source may be clearly understood.  Basically, writing a parody on something so well known is intimidating.

2)  I had to maintain the prose of the original while somehow still making it about how our professor, Prof. James Kee, had assigned us a very challenging paper (on, if you so chose, some facet of the Canterbury Tales.  As an aside, my paper was about how the structure of the Canterbury Tales itself, and the structure of some of the tales, namely the Nun's Priest's tale, represented Chaucer as an ironic narrator, who realizes through his poetic career, moving from dream visionary poetry to the Tales, that self-emptying love is the highest ideal of Christian love, and he then proceeded to represent it in literature, etc, etc this is way too long a paranthetical aside) and how we all spent many nights finishing it.  I worked that idea into how we, the students, would like to go on pilgrimage, from Worcester (where we all go to school) to our own "ends," meaning, our homes.

3)  I chose to write it in Middle English, rather than in Modern English.  Middle English is a beautiful language, though it was one that at this point, I only had experience reading.  What reading experience I had was also fairly limited.  It's a challenging language, and it's hard to believe, at times, that it is still English.  I pulled up several reference guides online, and in print, to enable me to write this 18 line parody.  In the end, what was supposed to be a small distraction from my paper ended up taking me nearly two hours, though I would say the end product is worth it.

Now, with both of these parodies as a whole, the only question they really raise is "Why do I spend my time doing this when I should be writing a paper?"  The answer is pretty simple, and pretty silly.  Because I enjoy it!  I know that it's not a terribly productive or smart way to spend time that should be spent in other academic pursuits, but I find it fairly fulfilling, and enjoyable.  As a procrastination technique, it usually revs my brain back up into high gear, so when I finish these poems of procrastination, I'm fired up and ready to continue my real work!  And I get to share these poems with friends who are going through similar situations, and that's fun for me.

What are your procrastination techniques?  Anyone else write poetry?

Mutually Deaf - Chris Hart

Late last night I listened
to the sounds of the house
wondering if it might have ears
with which to hear me.

Air vents exhaled their climate-controlled breath
as I heard the metallic clink
of the bathroom lock snapping shut behind
my naked form under the squeaking shower head.

Pattering down, the water whispered to me,
or so it seemed.

Puzzled by this unexpected speech
I cracked a half-smile
wondering if perhaps it was I
who had lacked the ears to hear you.


In talking about my own poem, I am going to take a two-fold approach: I will talk about the things I wanted the poem to convey, and I will talk about what I wish I could better convey.  I think it's somewhat inappropriate to break the poem down in the same way I would with another poet, since in this case, I am fully aware of the author's intent.  If someone else would like to offer an alternate interpretation to my own, I would really appreciate it.  I could think of no higher compliment than a poem speaking to another person in a way I could never imagine.

When I wrote this poem, I hadn't experienced anything coming close to heartbreak.  I had experienced breakups, or disappointments, but never anything that really shook me as a person.  I wondered what it would feel like to have, effectively, part of your identity wrestled away from you, and the conclusion I came to was that it must be a very stark feeling of loneliness.  I saw a shower as a good expression of solitude and as a good place to capture thoughtful sadness.  I transformed the lover, who was now out of the picture, into the house, whispering various things to the solitary figure.  The figure cannot hear these whispers, much as, I imagined, a couple on the verge of dissolving must be unable to hear one another clearly and fully.  In a moment of sad revelation, the figure understands the house's whispering as that of his lover, and realizes all too late that he equally deaf as his lover.  The only thing to do in such a situation is to smile, even if it is a rueful, painful smile.  The poem is paced as moving through tenses continually, with irregular or absent punctuation to control the flow.  I want a real sense of motion right up until the water of the shower coming down.  I think this was best achieved in the second stanza.

The regrets I have with this poem are split between formal characteristics and content.  Formally, I wish I could have been somewhat more strict in structuring the poem.  I had been reading a lot of Billy Collins while I wrote this poem, and I tried to imitate his flow, though I don't think I succeed on his level.  And being free from any formal structure, the poem cannot fall back on structure to convey meaning, level the words very much to speak for themselves.  I do not think I approached anywhere near Billy Collin's level of profundity, and as such, perhaps utilizing a stronger traditional format would have been more suitable.  Additionally, I would have liked to utilize a stronger element of rhyme.  Sonically, the most interesting thing I have going are alliterative passages and contrasting consonant and vowel sounds.  I do not think rhyme is dead, or cliche, or trite, but rather, that it can be very powerful when used to draw attention to particular words or rhythms.  Content-wise, looking at the poem after having experienced some degree of heartbreak, I realize that the picture I painted was incomplete.  To be sure, solitude is an element of heartbreak, but I feel that I failed to capture the agency of heartbreak.  The active participation one puts oneself through.  You are never the only one hurt in a situation like this, and I wish I could have captured better the awful feeling of knowing that your actions and words hurt someone.  It's a feeling that everyone knows, or will know, and I wish I had found the words for it.  Because taking that solitary shower and realizing what an idiot you are for being unable to hear has a flip side, and that flip side is realizing how very worthless your words had been.

Does this poem speak anything to you apart from those things I identified?  Is it successful, or as I fear, an uninteresting slice of something everyone is already familiar with?  Let me know what you think.