We have an assignment due next week, and as I am traveling a lot, and have the play next week (Enchanted April, if you’re interested. I’m playing the Italian maid Costanza), I have got ahead of myself and written my 40 (+/- 5%) lines of poetry. Here they are. If anything strikes you as too awful for words, please let me know before I submit them 🙂
Estacion de Bernal (1)
The carcass of the cow lies by the railway,
her last tracks leading to these last tracks (2).
No sign of injury or attack, a
natural death. The heat that sears this land
has done its work, dessicating her
Brittle hide, like poorly tanned leather.
What once were visceral organs spill
To the ground as hay. I see what is
Missing: no maggots, no flies, no stench.Lately I have been like that poor cow,
hollow, dried out, a sagging parody of
what I once was. But this site has refilled,
replenished me, let me live again.
Here, in a landscape so often seen but
never sensed, the tang of dung, the scratch of sun,
the whine of wind; where all was flat, they bring relief.(1) Estación de Bernal, in Querétaro State, Mexico, is an abandoned railway station.
(2) Though most of Mexico’s railway network has fallen into disuse, the track that passes the Estación de Bernal is one of the very few that is still used in the whole of Mexico.
My dreams shine fiercely
My dreams shine fiercely, guiding me to shore.
Although I am alone and blown away
from where I want to be, by greater force
than I can handle in my everyday,
my dreams still shine and fill me with the hope
that soon the winds will die and waves will calm,
and I will right my craft and head for home
more ready for the weather still to come.So even if I never reach that light,
just knowing it is there will make me strong,
resolved to battle on against the tide
and find the harbour’s shelter from the storm.
My dreams are not my final destination,
but fiercely shine to guide me to salvation.Still Ill
The temperature of my elation
is far too feverish, too hot.
My heart hurts from the exertion
of pumping joy-infected blood.
My pulse dances with excitement,
I feel such pleasure in this pain.
I submit to such an ailment.
I hope I’m never well again.