w00t.

"Workshop" by Billy Collins.
Look it up. It's rad.

Cleaning Machines and Holes in Space with Powerful Gravitational Fields

From the book The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms because it's easier than writing the definition out myself:
A villanelle is a poem of nineteen lines. It has five stanzas, each of three lines, with a final one of four lines. The first line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas. The third line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the third and fifth stanzas. These two refrain lines follow each other to become the second-to-last and last lines of the poem. The rhyme scheme is aba. The rhymes are repeated according to the refrains.
It has a lot of rules.
My goal for this was to follow the rules and end up with something somewhat comprehensible. I followed the rules, at least.
When I typed this out, I spelled 'vacuum' wrong every single time.
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I used to think a vacuum was like a black hole
that dumped the sucked up trash into eternity.
And then I thought that really, that vacuum had more than one role.

The machine does take a toll
that tired housekeeper, who, though tired, still whistles a cheerful ditty.
I used to think a vacuum was like a black hole.

And, come to think, vacuum lines might bring to mind a crop-lined knoll
And that knoll, tied to a wide open plain, makes the housekeeper a little less itty bitty.
And then I thought that really, that vacuum had more than one role.

But actually, black holes might be like vacuums, with one goal
that is, to suck up the stars while whistling with pity.
I used to think a vacuum was like a black hole.

Compare, an ingested and clattering pencil, that thin yellow pole
to a bright consumed star. How witty.
And then I thought that really, that vacuum had more than one role.

So please, place the vacuum and the black hole equally on that tall totem pole,
neither being a higher entity.
I used to think a vacuum was like a black hole.
And then I thought that really, that vacuum had more than one role.

Little Guys

The class was given a couple lines for 'inspiration'.
We had to use those lines in our own stuff....
I used 'stones fill with sound' and 'beauty and grace are performed'.
I thought they turned out to be cool little arrangements of words.
I can't remember where the lines came from. Profuse apologies.
And I'm not entirely sure I used the word 'catalyst' in the correct context. x_x
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Inanimate Objects Releasing Vibrations of Noise

Stones fill with sound
Our shoes the catalyst
Arms swinging in time to the stride

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Flight Pattern

The smooth grain of feathers pounding the air
Birds enveloped in a wet haze of cloud
Rotating in rehearsed precision
Beauty and grace performed in endless seasonal symphonies

You, Andrew Marvell

By Archibald Macleish

Once again, not my poem. But I totally fell in love with it, and, like, wanted it on the same page as mine. Genius by association, maybe?
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And here face down beneath the sun
And here upon earth's noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night:

To feel creep up the curving east
The earthy chill of dusk and slow
Upon those under lands the vast
And ever climbing shadow grow

And strange at Ecbatan the trees
Take leaf by leaf the evening strange
The flooding dark about their knees
The mountains over Persia change

And now at Kermanshah the gate
Dark empty and the withered grass
And through the twilight now the late
Few travelers in the westward pass

And Baghdad darken and the bridge
Across the silent river gone
And through Arabia the edge
Of evening widen and steal on

And deepen on Palmyra's street
The wheel rut in the ruined stone
And Lebanon fade out and Crete
High through the clouds and overblown

And over Sicily the air
Still flashing with the landward gulls
And loom and slowly disappear
The sails above the shadowy hulls

And Spain go under and the shore
Of Africa the gilded sand
And evening vanish and no more
The low pale light across that land

Nor now the long light on the sea:

And here face downward in the sun
To feel how secretly
The shadow of the night comes on...

Dancing to DNA

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. As that unhappy poet A.E. Housman put it: "For Nature, heartless, witless Nature Will neither care nor know." DNA neither cares no knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. -Richard Dawkins.

This is in response to that...
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Winding and twirling melodies
Singing of hours, happiness, and
time spent in tears

A hand lifted in greeting
A foot stepping on a journey
Appendages playing in efficient harmonies

Coincidence: atoms rearranged?
Cataclysmic explosions resulting in
beings capable of emotion and

conscious thought and
sometimes
logical conclusions

An opera of Mother Nature?
From a gorilla to a man?
How useless these lives

Preparing only for the
next step of evolution's thunder
A mission nonexistent

The changing of the leaves and
the ocean's swell
The sparks in a lover's eyes

This orchestrated dance of our
DNA arranged
in complex patterns

of love and death
must be composed by
a higher power.

Flying Wheels

First attempt of manipulating syllables and meter. Also the first attempt at a longer-ish poem. Note: this event is mostly fictional. Though some of it isn't. =)
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I sat on the tailgate
Strapped on my skates and pads
Rolled gracefully
Up to the tall gray ramps.

I turned and gathered speed
Flew up a small tabletop
Bump bump
Over and into the air.

I looked at the half-pipe
No finish yet, plain wood
Nails protrude
From the surface--sharp points.

I climbed to the platform
Looked over the ramps edge
Really high
Not the first trip, still, scary.

Guys nodded at me--go
Skates over the coping
I'm nervous
I leaned slightly to much

And went sliding--face first
Shocked--my brain felt wiggly
Sharp nails
Blood--skin torn off my face.

I laughed dazedly
Guys slid down from the top
Dude, dude
They said, are you okay?

How many fingers are
we holding up right now?
Four hands
Fingers, fingers--thirteen.

You're fine, they said--relieved
Get back on the coping
Back up
Before you get scared again.

I stood up--wobbly legs
Again? I wasn't scared before
You were, yea
You hesitated, you

Got stiff as you went down
You didn't flow--you got scared
Back up
Before you get scared again.

I climbed back to the top
Don't wait, they said, go quick
I went
I went fast--didn't fall.

Good, said the guys up top
Now go wipe the blood off
The ramp
No way, I said as I

Opened my Vanilla
Coke--That's not happening.

Amethyst Magnets and Bones

This is a rewrite of a story I think I already put on here...I added a lot to it, so I figured I'd post.
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I work at a bead store. I work at a bead store because I love shiny and sparkly things and because of the salary. While the customers are, on average, nicely dressed middle-aged women, some aren’t. The most recently interesting was an incredibly tall woman in heels and a pencil skirt.

She strolled into the room—oversized black sunglasses hiding her face and a slim jim dangling from her hand. A man stumbled behind her; his plaid shirt barely covered his large belly.

"Oooh, look at all this stuff." She snapped her gum and tugged at her ruffled shirt.

I said hello and received an absent minded wave.

He went to the crystal section. "Hey, these are really sparkly. I wonder how much they are."

Her heels clunked on the wood floor. "These are pretty...so pretty."

He peered over her shoulder. "I wonder how much they are."

She turned to me: “It’s so hot in here. It’s so hot.”

I shrugged and issued a slightly perplexed noise: the room was freezing.

“Ha. She doesn’t care. Look at her. She doesn’t care."

He turned and I could see his belly wiggle. “She doesn’t care.”

The woman lifted a chunky purple bead. "This is nice."

He twisted his face up. "It is...but I wonder...."

"Oooh! Magnetic beads!"

His eyes grew wide. "Hey, these are all really good prices. You know that magnet I have? The amethyst magnet that's like all amethyst?"

"Yep." She tore off a piece of the slim jim.

"It was five dollars. Five dollars for the whole magnet."

"Huh. You ready? Let's go.”

"Yea. I'm ready."

"Let's go."

I watched them leave. "Have a nice day."

She turned and snapped her gum. "Yep."

"Hey, you know those magnets?" his voice faded as she slammed the door.

"Yea."

I could hear him through the window. "I wonder...how much they were..."

This visit was prefaced by an older man. I was making a necklace at the time, and my boss was talking to a woman with a Vera Bradley purse. He sidled through the door.

“Hi.” his hands trembled.

My mouth dropped slightly. The man took up so much space. If his neon shirt had been a sound, it would have screamed loud enough to break the glass beads on the wall.

“I make Indian bracelets,” he said rather wildly.

“Ok,” my boss replied with a polite smile. There was nothing else to say.

He shook his head and looked down at the floor. “I make…Indian bracelets.”

The woman with the purse turned around to face the counter. “I saw the prettiest necklace the other day—it was almost like a chain mail, except with crystals.”

My boss: “Ah, we have exactly the materials….”

“Chain mail! Chain mail! I was at a medieval festival the other weekend, and one of my friends, who’s a blacksmith, taught me how to make chainmail, and he made me make it all day, and at the end of the day, my arms were so tired, because I’d been making chainmail all day. So believe me, I know about all that chain mail!” He punctuated his loud rush of words with a decisive nod of his head.

“Oh,” said the woman with the purse, “I imagine it can be tiring.” She tucked her merchandise— tiny rings for making chainmail necklaces—into her purse and left the store.

He looked around at the beads for a moment. He had a rather lost expression on his pudgy face, but I hesitated before asking, “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

He walked to the back room and sat down at the table. “Yes. Yes I am. I’m looking for bone beads, because I make Indian necklaces. I sell ‘em at medieval festivals and conferences and festivals. I need some bone beads, but really I should make ‘em out of stuff I killed, but I don’t want to go hunting and then have to take out the sinew and bone and stuff out of the dead bodies. Do you have bone beads?”

“I, um…”

“Cause I really need bone beads.”

“Right over here. Is this what you were looking for?”

“No. I wanted a long bead with a slightly oval edge.”

“How about this?”

“No. I really need the oval because it doesn’t cut into sinew and stuff.”

I glanced briefly at his faded dreamcatcher tattoo as I took down another string of beads. Little ripples of foul smelling air were coming off the man’s body.

“This is more oval…”

“No.”

“I could order some beads if you can wait about a week. That way, we could get exactly the beads you wanted.”

“No, I just…no. I can’t do that.”

“Ok…did you need anything else?”

“No.”

The man and his yellow shirt walked out to the parking lot and squeezed behind the steering wheel. I returned to my necklace. My boss walked past.

“What did that man come in here for?”

“He wanted bone beads with a slightly oval edge so they wouldn’t cut into sinew.”

“Oh.”

Horsewoman

This isn't my poem...but it's one of my absolute favorites, and most likely it will be how I end up as an old woman.
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when I am an old horsewoman
I shall wear leather
I shall wear turquoise and diamonds
and a straw hat that doesn't suit me
and I shall spend my social security
on red wine and carrots
and sit in the alleyway of my barn
and listen to my horses breathe.

I will sneak out in the middle of the night
and ride the old gray arab mare
across the moonstruck meadow
if my old bones will allow
and when people come to call
I will smile and nod
as I walk past the garden to the barn
and show instead of flowers,
stalls fresh lined with straw.

I will shovel and sweat
and wear hay in my hair as if it were jewels
and I will be an embarrassment to all
who will have not yet found the peace
in being free to have a horse as a best friend;
a friend who waits at midnight hour with muzzle and nicker and patient eyes
for the kind of woman I will be
...when I am old.

author unknown

=)

How to Become an Indian/Spy/Superhero

A 'how to' inclass assignment. Some of my favoritest things to do when I was little.
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Orange construction paper-- draw a feather headband. That goes great with the black sweatshirt. Sneak through trees-- startle calm parents-- make hideous faces in dark windows. Bath towel around your neck, jump off the porch, off the patio, a tree, the shed, the bigger shed at the end of the yard-- sure, you can fly if it's just a little farther. A friend's pony-- no bridle, no saddle, (warriors don't use them), tearing around the field so fast you can't breathe, then when you fall off, you really can't breathe. Lurking in the forest-- bow and arrow in hand, you're so invisible. (Parents call later- Is she okay? She was sitting in that tree for so long?) Build tepees and forts-- tell parents you're moving out to become an independent woman. Pack supplies: bananas, ice cream sandwiches, apples, icypops, bread, orange juice, ice cream, leftover rice in a plastic bag, and a really big milkshake (Mom, can I have one?). Repair your fort for occupation, can't do it alone-- Catwoman Halloween costume, that'll do the trick. You're going to live here until spring-- it's September, but maybe it'll be a short winter-- draw a calendar in the dirt. You'll be fine: you can make more icypops out of orange juice and snow.