Month: December 2011
Poem 75
Poem 74
on swallowing my ego
very much like an acorn
capped absentmindedly risking
the ebony beak crack
clack cackling at the stem.
what then do you tell the acorn
wrecked surely from the feat
that birds too need to eat.
very much like the acorn,
bitter to the tongue and worse
to the ground afoot with
gravity too wasting no effort
to pull it smoothed under.
very much like the acorn,
perhaps contrite, perhaps
but don’t you look smugly behind
the cricket eye of anonymity.
a bird needs to eat of the thick skin of
a new acorn, and it too must be broken to proceed.
–ECW
Poem 73
I wish I could tell the girl of thirteen looking strangely like me
that the world turns on her finger and all she must do is want to spin it,
before that ache sets in for the whole of it to spin on its own,
I want to tell her: invest, take the thick prick of your finger and be brave.
But she won’t and neither would I. And so it goes that one president; the un-
nertia of the predictable. Give me a line and I’ll bend it; cannot convince
ourselves to crack old habits. We are rabbits with candy colored feet.
So lucky to be young, so young indeed.
–ECW
Poem 72
a little bitter i’m still taking tests to prove my knowledge; bitter still i might not ace them.
Monday
In the adolescence of exam week; no tests for days.
Shopping for horror films on a borrowed Netflix
and for what; so I can sit here and pretend we all
didn’t just fail that Spanish exam. maybe it was
only me…
muttering puttering stuttering. hiccups on paper
would look like the innocent curls of a thrice erased answer
wisps of changing enlightenment. We forgive hiccups, but ignorance,
well, that’s why we take languages now isn’t it. I can sit
here and pretend I didn’t pick fights about it all summer
and assure myself it’ll be a beauty mark of a grade. We
can lie through the cavities in our caffeine colored teeth
about how poorly our GPA will look come Friday;
but maybe that’s the point: a borrowed language, a borrowed
account, a borrowed plot line to see till the end; I suppose I’ll see you there.
–ECW