Ancient poetry remix!

My "Parade of Want" (2009) vs. "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens (1843)

Illustration by John Leech

I want to stay poor forever.

“You’re poor enough.”

I want to be selfless.

“Much good it has ever done you.”

I want to dream of people that meant something.

“Look upon me!”

I want to spin a web of truths.

“I won’t believe it.”

I want to escape forces of habit.

“These are but shadows of the things that have been.”

I want to fall asleep in the bed of my childhood.

“Ask me who I was.”

I want to force time to be inconsequential.

“It matters little,” she said, softly. “To you, very little.”

I want to believe in more than I do.

“You don’t believe in me.”

I want to trust that I will die happy.

“May nothing you dismay!”

I want to knock on a strangers' door and be invited in.

“As if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave.”

I want to breathe the air from twenty other countries.

“I don’t mind going if a lunch is provided,”

I want to rebuild those who matter.

“You were always a good friend to me.”

I want the father of my children to be an amazing man.

“Because I fell in love.”

I want to be contented by the sound of wind.

“You recollect the way?”

I want to grow my mind like a weed.

“Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then?”

I want to accept my inability to ever fully know.

“God knows”

I want to learn to be a duck and allow words to roll off my back.

“What else can I be, [….] when I live in such a world of fools as this?”

I want to remember that my days are numbered.

“I am a mortal, and liable to fall.”

I want to expect what I deserve.

“You fear the world too much.”

I want to feel my laughter shake the tips of my toes.

“Here is a new game”

I want to smile in the faces of adversaries.

“What do you want with me?”

I want to be confident in the life that I choose to lead.

“Why do you doubt your senses?”

I want to create good.

“Ghost of the Future!”

I want to create good.

“I know what it is!”

I want to create good.

“Do you believe in me or not?”

A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. (2018, March 4). A Christmas Carol (Original First Edition Cover; 1843 Original Illustrations in Color by John Leech). https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm

 

Autumn Girl

Watch. Is she feral?
One day you'll train her to eat out of your hand
Each step is a statement:
I dare you. Impress me. 
Her change is scattered across your floor
Her influence is under your bed
And you're driving
And she's editing with her big red pen
You ask all the questions.
The answers are marked on the small of your back.
You love the way she walks
And the way film can't capture her eyes
And her hair is the color of driving through fall
And she changes just as fast.

Shower

Part my lips and blazing water flows in

    To clean out the space between my bones
    Sweep up the scraps of Sunday sin
    Dust off my brain and its great unknowns
    Mop the heavy smoking conflict from each lung
    Sanitize the silent grime left in your deepest cut
    Rinse the unhappy acid from my tongue
    Floss the indecisive space between my heart and gut
    Buff my kidneys to their youthful sober shine
    Purify every thought black with doubtful unease
    Scrape each stillborn concern from my spine

    And Brush the bad habits from between my knees

The heat of this labor escapes in sharp exhale

    Short breaths birthing shining music in major scale

"I've been meaning to tell you...I wrote you a sonnet."
And the phone cuts out.

The Fingertips of a Voice

Thin sheen of water on a floor
Invisible until touched
The fingertips of a voice send ripples through
Memories puddled there
Growing to waves of contemplation
What was said back then
Felt in deepness of the gut
The wind of heavy breath adding to the whites
Of his eyes and the waves
Travel to the other coast
Crash against deeply seized hearts
Washing down throats with swallowed thoughts
Leaving salt on the tongue
From great bodies of pining
When the annual touch transpired
But as the waves and phone lines break
I tear away from the enthralling current
And bursting to the surface
My lungs refind the air
Of only lightly missing you from afar
So that I can keep afloat.

No Eclipse

You are staring at the sun
Blindness in beauty and awe
Try to stop what has begun

Light that compares to no one
Can cause them but has no flaw
You are staring at the sun

Color exceeded by none
Wanting on but you withdraw
Try to stop what has begun

Danger not to be undone
Through my skin and eyes you saw
You are staring at the sun

The casing bursts from a gun
After the shot, hot and raw
Try to stop what has begun

Heat and glory outrun
Freeze in fear only to thaw
You are staring at the sun
Try to stop what has begun

Post-Algebra

You and I were an open-ended equation.
Drifting, diving, dividing into what we both didn't know.
Using a previously unknown technique,
We introduced mayhem and true sacrifice under the guise of casual romance.
And we multiplied that by secrecy, humor, and a dual inability to communicate as functioning adults.
I loved buying you that lying ring.

What I Couldn't Write

There is no poetic way to say that I broke your heart
Every metaphor falls short of that fear in your eyes
No hyperbole can exaggerate minutes spent thinking of you
Similes paint a lifeless picture of the trust I shattered
The game of alliteration cannot dance around this remorse
Absolutely no onomatopoeia could express the sound of sobbing, the arms wrapped so fiercely, the breathing of hair, the tears falling to clothes, the pull away, the closing door...
And nothing rhymes with I’m sorry.