The Boy from School

I am a boy that knows,

how to get that GPA,

and fight for alpha male.

Stone body built

firm sinew

eyes of bullets through skin.

You have to understand

the breaking point of sticks,

our bones must be stronger

than his.

I am a boy, slippery as an eel.

Facades will get me far.

RR #5

"We read contemporary writers and imitate their line breaks, or their similes and worry that we shouldn't, that we'll only create bad reproductions instead of original works."

"We want a presence that convinces, one that engages and seduces a reader into the world of our poems, a voice a reader will want to listen to. When we fail to produce this voice, the poem fails."

"If you're studying some one's style, just about every aspect of her poems is worth considering."

"Of course, there's a mysterious element in poetry that seems to resist intellectual analysis, and this is good."

"The high road is filled with long, Latinate words - "expectorate" instead of "spit," "indefatigable" instead of "untiring," and so on... Taking the high road is tricky, but some writers have done it successfully. The danger of is that you'll sound pompous and overinflated; the danger of ordinary diction is that you'll sound ordinary."

Drive

Anxious eyed driving,

new like a kids first.

Smooth T and the jeans

with the rips. Hair sculpted

un-kempt

A circle of stretched skin

cool, under clammy fingers,

and a petal push

to go faster than a cycle.

Eyes like two candles in the twilight,

as a child in a storefront peers.

The hollow resonance

of bending metal define

the silent gasps.

Through spider-webs projected

red fur, no body found.

RR #4

"...We live in a figurative world; our language and our thinking, our very perceptions, are metaphoric. We continually make comparisons and connections, often without even realizing that we are doing so, so comfortable are we with seeing in this way."

"Figurative language is a way to deepen and intensify the themes and concerns of your work."

"... Metaphors aren't always contained within poems in discrete bits; often, entire poems work on a metaphoric level. This is one fo the pleasures of both reading adn writing poems: the recasting of one thing in therms of another, the revelation of the ways outwardly different experiences can be seen to have a similar core."

"A poem may consist entirely of ltereral images, but they may well resonate with metaphorical meaning."

"... those 'passionate midnights' in the basement are a metaphor for the work of shaping the materials of a poem, writing and revising until the magined world is fully formed. In developing your own figurative images, don't worry if your language is clumsy or confusing at first. Just have patience, and keep digging."