Second Draft of a Poem

Morning Confession

metal pierces blushing flesh
fingers probe, plunge into the land’s
heart-shaped child, pry into
intimate corners, prod
white fibers and pull forth
beads of flesh

they shatter
explode
between coffee-stained teeth

on the plate a carcass splayed open
bloodless, vacant, defunct

First Draft of a Poem

So I don't write poetry very often, and this is very much a first draft of something I've been thinking about for a while, but I'd appreciate your feedback as I think this has some potential if it were developed a bit.

Morning Confession

I eat pomegranates for breakfast.
And sometimes I yearn for the substance of
A slice of bread – its firmness and fullness
Familiarity, convenience, tidiness
Next to a cup of instant coffee
But instead

I slice into the pomegranate with my knife
And pry apart the insides with my hand
Prodding at the white fibers and
Pulling forth the beads of fruit
Pushing them between my lips
And crunching, devouring

I say that this connects me to the land
To the seasons – I eat what is
Growing here, now.
But I don’t know the land
And I don’t know the seasons
Although, at least, I do eat pomegranates
For breakfast.
From inside my apartment
I imagine myself a part of this vital world
And I cut into the land’s heart-shaped child
Grinding the seeds between my
Coffee-stained teeth

The environment is a cause for which
I enter my credit card number online
Donating chai for the source of all life
And closing my computer to shut it away
The environment is large and far away
It is a stranger whom I pity
An abstraction grounded only in the sky

But the round globe of the pomegranate
Feels firm in the palm of my hands
Flushed pink as I enter it with
My sticky fingers, plucking the
Pinkish blood and white, firm body
From a corpse splayed wide across my plate
A silenced heart upon a hospital bed

I drop the last teardrop-shaped seed
Into my cavernous mouth
The rind is empty, shredded
Its secrets revealed, it holds no more
And I throw the carcass in the trashcan
Close the lid, and
Walk away.

For Your Reading Pleasure

A poem we read in Yiddish class - the translation is mine, so bear with me...

By the White Tables, by Mani Leib

By the white tables I sat for a long while,
And looked into eyes, and talked, talked,
And in those eyes I forgot myself,
Until the old waiter said into my ear,
With a good smile and with a soft voice,
Apologetically told me: It's late...

OK, bye!... Tomorrow I will return.
Streets. Night. A fog blew, blew.
Streets. And from out of the fog emerged
Eyes. Those eyes, light and teary,
And like moving, shining stars,
They accompanied me, insignificant me, homeward.


Manny Leib, born Manny Leib Branhinsky in 1883 in Nizhn, a small town not far from Kiev, arrived in America at the age of 22. He worked in shoe factories in New York, where he eventually contracted tuberculosis from their poor working conditions. Leib began his poetry career by translating Ukranian and Russian poetry into Yiddish for the Yiddish daily newspaper, the Forverts. He wrote poetry for adults and also for children, and is known for having brought a formal complexity to Yiddish poetry, consisting of tight rhymes and soft, polished sounds. He was a leader and founding member of the American Yiddish poetry group Di Yunge (the Young Ones). (The information above I mostly found at the NYBC website).




By the way, thanks for the teddy bears and well wishes. I am on the mend.

Spenserian

Unfortunately for everyone, I've decided to resume these stupid poems because the test is coming up soon. So, a Spenserian on Halloween costumes. This is the stanza Spenser created for The Faerie Queen, reduced to a simplistic and stupid rhyme about finding a Halloween costume. It is a nine-line stanza. The first eight lines are in iambic pendameter, and the final line is in iambic hexameter, which is called an alexandrine. The stanza's rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc

On Thinking of a Halloween Costume
The contents of my closet are not vast
But soon October will be at it’s end
So I must think of something, and think fast
A costume for which I won’t have to spend
A lot, but others still can comprehend
The character that I purport to be
And no polite soul need to just pretend
Smile and nod awkwardly at me
I must think of a few disguises, two or three

A lamp: dress in clothes that are all brown
And thread a cord so it hangs behind your shirt
Wear a lampshade on your head as though a crown
And clip a chain to your ear, though it might hurt
A flashlight goes inside the shade and squirt
Some yellow facepaint all over your face
You can paint pictures all over your skirt
Of flowers, rainbows, even outer space
If you have it you can even use some lace.

To be a box of popcorn is quite neat
First you need a box that’s big and tall

With holes for legs, and stockings for your feet
Paint stripes of red and white over it all
And when this work seems to be complete
Write “popcorn” at the place where the stripes meet
Glue popcorn on the box and everywhere
A lot, you’ll lose some as you walk the streets
So put some in your pockets just to spare
And if you are so brave, string popcorn in your hair!


There are many more ideas but I don’t know
How to make them work in Israel
Where to buy supplies, or where to go
For cheap clothing you don’t want to wear for real
To celebrate a day that no one knows
Or cares to know about at all, and so
I don’t know what I’ll wear but I do think
That Halloween requires a good show
So I’ll come up with something, if it stinks
At least I will have tried, and will have earned a drink.