More poems for class

[Marsbert]

Here's some more poems I've been assigned to write for Intermediate Creative Writing, 'cus I know ya'll dyin to read more! ;)

This is a 'list poem':
USELESS

Dave’s birthday card waiting to be sent, my cell phone turned off, a crumpled pack of tissues from months ago, too many mechanical pencils that are out of led, my SUNY card with an ancient picture, a shopping list for the overpriced bookstore, my lucky pig that has yet to bring me any sort of luck, 2 keys hooked to 22 key chains, and a pack of sticky notes clinging to “The Practice of Poetry”.


(We had to take an important event in our lives and somehow connect it to a wierd animal we just learned about)
IT’S 115 DEGREES OUTSIDE
For the Okapi


For years, my best friend teased me -
called me “homebody” and “momma’s girl."

Then it happened,
she moved -
not just away…
- but to the other side of the country.
Where there is always sun, and heat, and sweat,
and never – ever – five feet of snow.

So she convinced me, “come visit!”
And I did, I left the safe, familiar enclosure
of home and braved the
dank, clean, stifling airplane,
and stepped out into Arizona.

A girl who loves the snow,
and the ice,
and the wind & rain,
standing in the middle of the desert.
A striped Okapi lost in the middle of a deer park.


This is a palinode:
No Writers Block in this Brain


Of course I’ve been writing!
Haven’t you seen me -
scribbling thoughts onto napkins at dinner when no one is looking –
I have NOT been blocked for three years.

Oh, you mean, have I finished anything in the past three years?
Sure I have.
Something that wasn’t a homework assignment?
Of course.

And no,
I do not feel as though my arteries have clogged and my heart will stop at any moment unless I put the pen to the paper very soon –
I do not feel lost and bewildered because of the terror I feel every time I think it may have left me –
I do NOT dream about once again writing as freely and unconstrained as I did when I was younger and unable to contain those crafty words.


And here's my dreaded Sestina:
Futurama
“The show that watches back”

It’s the Simpson’s set in the future,
except with a bunch of crazy aliens,
including a lobster named Zoidberg
and Bender, an alcoholic robot,
and Amy Wong – who says “guh”
like it’s her job – and everyone’s more than a little stupid.

But no matter how stupid
Matt Groenings future
is, still cool, because it’s Groening – guh!
Who wouldn’t want to live with aliens?
And have a robot
for a best friend, and Zoidberg

for a doctor? Oh that Zoidberg,
he’s a stupid
one – but Bender, now that robot
is the real attraction of the future,
no matter how many aliens
there are, his wild nights of guh

-zzling booze like it’s his job, will always be guh
-rate! But Zoidberg
is my favorite alien,
if you couldn’t tell. He’s so stupid,
it’s hilarious. But there’s more to this show set a thousand years in the future
than him, or the drunken robot.

There are tons of other robots,
guh!
As well as mutants, god, famous heads, and Nibbler running amok in the future,
and I won’t let you forget good ol’ Zoidberg.
It might all seem stupid
to someone who is alien

to the concept - or someone who hates aliens.
But I can't hate the robots,
or the silly, stupid
jokes. And if I start saying “guh”
on a regular basis, or start walking like Zoidberg,
or dreaming of living in the future,

then perhaps aliens have come down and guh
-zzled my brain, or maybe the robot or Zoidberg
have made me a stupid, Futurama-watching nerd for the future.