Jacob+McNeill


 * So ,yeah. This is my page for poetry.**

2/20/09

Ode to the People who Deal with Septa

The people who wait underground searching for the light deep in the tunnels are waiting for an arrival. The people who stand in the sun, the wind, the dark rainy days, the harsh winters are waiting for an arrival. The people have nothing to do but wait and there is no other to turn to. They are all waiting. The people wait in crowds for extensive amounts of time. They come with their 2s and coins. But they wait for a long time. They wait, and wait, and wait for the busses and trains and trolleys.

2/23/09

Sonnet about Thinking

I think of a lot of things in my brain. They are things of greatness and things of pain. Some are ideas, big and small sizes, And some I try to get me some prizes. Some ideas are just for my gaining, And others are to bring less of a sting, Sometimes I rhyme inside my own head, I think many thoughts while thinking in bed, I think of poems that could be inside me, And struggle for words that make others see. I think of formulas from bio-chem. Then I realize that no one’s listening. I find no way to explain it to them, Then think that maybe this isn’t my thing.

Don’t Listen I am really not too good with Spanish so don’t listen to me. This might be a poem for English, so I wonder if you won’t listen to me.

I really am hoping that you won’t believe this, And if you do, still don’t listen to me.

I jumped of a building, from the front steps, If you were shocked at first, now really don’t listen to me.

I guess if you believe me you can listen some more, I guess shocking stories are my wont. Listen to me.

I guess I can tell you the meaning of a word, Maybe a word like “symbiont.” Listen to me.

It is something that likes to eat cake. If you listened to that then don’t listen to me.

Maybe I could tell you the meaning of another word. Come on, how about a word like “schizont?” Listen to me.

It’s a word that could be used to describe random things, Wow, if you listened to that then I really hope you won’t listen to me.

I’ll make you a cake to eat tomorrow, I’m not making it for you to eat though so don’t listen to me.

My name is Jacob and I am writing this poem for English, This poem stuff isn’t really my wont. Listen to me.

3/9/09 I think that most of my poems are about the way I think and my complete randomness. Some of the things I write have some actual meaning but others are just random words. I also noticed that I use a lot of words that most people don’t know exist.

3/14/09 Some poems by John Ashberry

Mottled Tuesday

Something was about to go laughably wrong, whether directly at home or here, on this random shoal pleading with its eyes till it too breaks loose, caught in a hail of references. I’ll add one more scoop to the pile of retail.

Hey, you’re doing it, like I didn’t tell you to, my sinking laundry boat, point of departure, my white pomegranate, my swizzle stick. We’re leaving again of our own volition for bogus patterned plains streaked by canals, maybe. Amorous ghosts will pursue us for a time, but sometimes they get, you know, confused and forget to stop when we do, as they continue to populate this fertile land with their own bizarre self-imaginings. Here’s hoping the referral goes tidily, O brother. Chime authoritatively with the pop-ups and extras. Keep your units pliable and folded, the recourse a mere specter, like you have it coming to you, awash with the new day and its abominable antithesis, OK? Don’t be able to make that distinction.

Syringia

Orpheus liked the glad personal quality Of the things beneath the sky. Of course, Eurydice was a part Of this. Then one day, everything changed. He rends Rocks into fissures with lament. Gullies, hummocks Can't withstand it. The sky shudders from one horizon To the other, almost ready to give up wholeness. Then Apollo quietly told him: "Leave it all on earth. Your lute, what point? Why pick at a dull pavan few care to Follow, except a few birds of dusty feather, Not vivid performances of the past." But why not? All other things must change too. The seasons are no longer what they once were, But it is the nature of things to be seen only once, As they happen along, bumping into other things, getting along Somehow. That's where Orpheus made his mistake. Of course Eurydice vanished into the shade; She would have even if he hadn't turned around. No use standing there like a gray stone toga as the whole wheel Of recorded history flashes past, struck dumb, unable to utter an intelligent Comment on the most thought-provoking element in its train. Only love stays on the brain, and something these people, These other ones, call life. Singing accurately So that the notes mount straight up out of the well of Dim noon and rival the tiny, sparkling yellow flowers Growing around the brink of the quarry, encapsulizes The different weights of the things. But it isn't enough To just go on singing. Orpheus realized this And didn't mind so much about his reward being in heaven After the Bacchantes had torn him apart, driven Half out of their minds by his music, what it was doing to them. Some say it was for his treatment of Eurydice. But probably the music had more to do with it, and The way music passes, emblematic Of life and how you cannot isolate a note of it And say it is good or bad. You must Wait till it's over. "The end crowns all," Meaning also that the "tableau" Is wrong. For although memories, of a season, for example, Melt into a single snapshot, one cannot guard, treasure That stalled moment. It too is flowing, fleeting; It is a picture of flowing, scenery, though living, mortal, Over which an abstract action is laid out in blunt, Harsh strokes. And to ask more than this Is to become the tossing reeds of that slow, Powerful stream, the trailing grasses Playfully tugged at, but to participate in the action No more than this. Then in the lowering gentian sky Electric twitches are faintly apparent first, then burst forth Into a shower of fixed, cream-colored flares. The horses Have each seen a share of the truth, though each thinks, "I'm a maverick. Nothing of this is happening to me, Though I can understand the language of birds, and The itinerary of the lights caught in the storm is fully apparent to me. Their jousting ends in music much As trees move more easily in the wind after a summer storm And is happening in lacy shadows of shore-trees, now, day after day."

But how late to be regretting all this, even Bearing in mind that regrets are always late, too late! To which Orpheus, a bluish cloud with white contours, Replies that these are of course not regrets at all, Merely a careful, scholarly setting down of Unquestioned facts, a record of pebbles along the way. And no matter how all this disappeared, Or got where it was going, it is no longer Material for a poem. Its subject Matters too much, and not enough, standing there helplessly While the poem streaked by, its tail afire, a bad Comet screaming hate and disaster, but so turned inward That the meaning, good or other, can never Become known. The singer thinks Constructively, builds up his chant in progressive stages Like a skyscraper, but at the last minute turns away. The song is engulfed in an instant in blackness Which must in turn flood the whole continent With blackness, for it cannot see. The singer Must then pass out of sight, not even relieved Of the evil burthen of the words. Stellification Is for the few, and comes about much later When all record of these people and their lives Has disappeared into libraries, onto microfilm. A few are still interested in them. "But what about So-and-so?" is still asked on occasion. But they lie Frozen and out of touch until an arbitrary chorus Speaks of a totally different incident with a similar name In whose tale are hidden syllables Of what happened so long before that In some small town, one indifferent summer.

A New Higher

You meant more than life to me. I lived through you not knowing, not knowing I was living. I learned that you called for me. I came to where you were living, up a stair. There was no one there. No one to appreciate me. The legality of it upset a chair. Many times to celebrate we were called together and where we had been there was nothing there, nothing that is anywhere. We passed obliquely, leaving no stare. When the sun was done muttering, in an optimistic way, it was time to leave that there.

Blithely passing in and out of where, blushing shyly at the tag on the overcoat near the window where the outside crept away, I put aside the there and now. Now it was time to stumble anew, blacking out when time came in the window. There was not much of it left. I laughed and put my hands shyly across your eyes. Can you see now? Yes I can see I am only in the where where the blossoming stream takes off, under your window. Go presently you said. Go from my window. I am in love with your window I cannot undermine it, I said.

Analysis of Ashberry's poetry John Ashberry’s poems are very freestyle. In the poem Mottled Tuesday he shows a lot of this freestyle:

Something was about to go laughably wrong, whether directly at home or here, on this random shoal pleading with its eyes This poem continues on and ca seem quite random to someone who hasn’t read any of his other poems. All of the poems by him that someone might read for the first time can usually seem very confusing at first. But then after reading the poem a few times the words actually start to make sense. Here is one example:

Hey, you’re doing it, like I didn’t tell you This poem is constantly upbeat and free. It has no clear rhyme scheme like most other poems. There are no certain amounts of syllables per line. He uses the words in a creative way. The words he uses aren’t ones that would be used every day. “Laughably” is a good example of one of the words that he uses in one of his poems that isn’t used every day, yet he uses it so easily in the poem. The poems he has written all seem to have a happiness to it even during the parts that would normally be interpreted as a sad part of the poem. When something goes wrong in his poems it goes “laughably wrong.”