But Not I

Can a man be a fraud?
Sure! When his honor's at stake,
not everyone measures up.

But not I

Can a man be a cheat?
Yeah! If profit's at stake,
we all want our share.

But not I

Can a man be a liar?
You bet! If a man's in a pinch,
he'll worm his way out.

But not I

Can a man be a sloth?
Oh yes! To choose play over work,
is what everyone does.

But not I

Can a man be complete?
Why not! It seems everyone has
a woman of their own.

but not i

Yes, I know, this is outdated. I do have a wonderful girlfriend now and I love her to death. Anyway, there was a point in time where I was rather down-trodden and a little lonesome. I am glad that has passed, and I'm glad I got at least this poem out of it. Hope you all enjoy! 

Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman

The Tree

O tree, thou art so kind
to shelter us always in our times of need
to hold in your broad boughs welcome and solace
for the weak and wan and lonesome.

Thou art so reliable, never waining, never wanting,
so true to the steady march of time.
Bud, blossom, bloom and die, a clock of years
for the weak and wan and lonesome.

Thou provides't what is needed,
always more, never less.
Play for child, food for all, and comfort
for the weak and wan and lonesome.

Thine companionship heightens all,
your lithe branches embrace the embattled soul,
an audience for the troubles and hurts,
of the weak and wan and lonesome.

O tree, you give me hope.
you provide stability in an unstable world.
You listen to our problems, feel the wants and needs,
of the weak and wan and lonesome.

Carry on brave companion
for you walk among giants, where few will dare tread.
If any man or woman could share your gifts,
to not be weak or wan or lonesome.

But none do share your heavenly gifts
all see but their own black hearts and rotted minds
carefully carving their own dark glob of worldly fame
unable to see the forest for the tree
but unable to see the tree for the wood
for these men and women are our idols
the focus of our satanic worship
the black succubi who carry us from our beds
to exploit our darkest secrets and desires
they reject the righteous for the easy
and the powerful for the simple
they coddle the slow and weigh down the fast
for equality ensures their power
and none will see their errors
for the lamb suit is impenetrable
while the wolf's greedy eyes still shine through
but if one man woman or child
could pull
                one
                      small
                              thread
the suit comes off
but then what is that man woman or child
but the next wolf.

Oh, if I were a tree, able to live my life
unencumbered by these horrors and wants.
But to leave them, leaves society, leaves a man
to be weak, and wan, and lonesome.

So, as it is now the first weekend, I figured it was about time to post one of my own poems. This one was part of a collection I did as part of my not-really-kind-of creative writing class last year. A little more explanation on that is probably needed. Last year, I did not have enough room in my schedule to take creative writing, so I decided instead to do all of the assignments for the class and submit them as an anonymous student. The teacher was fairly confused for the entirety of the course, and the last day I went and submitted my final assignment in person and told him that I was the one submitting the assignments. I think he was amused, but I'm not really sure. Either way, this is one of the assignments that I turned in for a freeform poem, so enjoy! Please criticize, I want to get better and I won't without knowing what's wrong and what's right. Thanks! 

Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman

Waiting

I have seen thousands of beautiful things

But only the ugly has ever felt real

Some nights I dream of Niagra Falls like

I am more than a floodgate waiting to break

Face-first towards the bottoms of hotel pools

Convincing myself in the way we try to dream with eyes open

Then I would learn to soar before

Rock bottom broke my bones

This world is marked by seven wonders
and seven billion broken hearts,
each playing cat’s cradle with fraying ties
and praying that perfect comes to those
who wait and wait and wait.
I grow an ounce more impatient
each time my toes touch the scale.

I drink for the aftertaste,
the bitter notes I can’t define and
the feeling I’ll get in seventeen years when
I hear tonight’s song on the oldies station
and convince myself in the way we try
to drown when we are swimming
that it’s stuck in my head and
far too pretty to escape.

Maybe in seventeen years I’ll sleep easy

And skip rocks across water with lights in my eyes

And a flick in my wrist to say swim

Maybe I’ll have learned by then

That it’s lovely to search for perfection

In the way children play midday hide and seek

And pretend it is more than a game

Maybe I will find myself

If I wait and wait and wait

Within the past month, the amount of job applications that I've submitted is almost astounding to me and now I'm in the phase of simply waiting for a reply. And literally it's driving me insane. I'm one of those people who really likes to plan ahead and know what's going on all the time so I can be prepared. And I'm sure we have all experienced this feeling. Waiting for a college acceptance, waiting for a job, waiting for Friday to come, waiting for summer break, waiting for an opportunity, waiting for "the one."

And it's just so damn easy to slip into wanting to give up. Many times have I thought of giving up on school work, giving up on people, giving up on life. But these are not good options, let me tell you. As dreadful as sitting in anticipation, getting worked up and depressed about a situation doesn't make you feel better about the situation or about yourself. When treading across the ocean, it's not an easy decision to choose to drown, that's not what I'm saying. But to be able to get what you want, to get what you deserve, to get what you've been working for, then you gotta keep on keeping on and swim harder, even if it means swimming in a different direction towards a different goal. 

Let me get off my soap box, sorry. 

This poem does have a lot of water motifs as you probably noticed. I'm from Maine and the ocean and water is a big part of my life and I really love it. During a storm, the ocean is always really rough and yet there are always a few surfers out there making the best of it. Plus after the storm, the water is so clear, so beautiful. Plus there's a bunch of shells and sea glass that you can then collect. There's also quite a bit of my childhood in here, especially the times with my sister. Whenever we go to dance competitions  we swam in the hotel pools with the other dancers and it was always really fun. Me and my sister also learned how to do cat's cradle so that we can do it with our eyes closed. We also really like listening to the oldies station: her favorite artist is Frank Sinatra (yeah, she's super classy for a 13 year old). She's one of my reasons why I keep on keepin' on, and everyone should have that. I think I might call her this weekend, I do miss her so.

I didn't mean for this to be so long and I doubt anyone has read all the way to the end. But if you have, thank you for listening to my rambling. Til next time. Godspeed. ~Sarah

Sylvia Plath - Daddy

Daddy

You do not do, you do not do

Any more, black shoe 

In which I have lived like a foot 

For thirty years, poor and white, 

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. 

Daddy, I have had to kill you. 

You died before I had time-- 

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, 

Ghastly statue with one gray toe 

Big as a Frisco seal 

And a head in the freakish Atlantic 

Where it pours bean green over blue 

In the waters off beautiful Nauset. 

I used to pray to recover you. 

Ach, du. 

In the German tongue, in the Polish town 

Scraped flat by the roller 

Of wars, wars, wars. 

But the name of the town is common. 

My Polack friend 

Says there are a dozen or two. 

So I never could tell where you 

Put your foot, your root, 

I never could talk to you. 

The tongue stuck in my jaw. 

It stuck in a barb wire snare. 

Ich, ich, ich, ich, 

I could hardly speak. 

I thought every German was you. 

And the language obscene 

An engine, an engine 

Chuffing me off like a Jew. 

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. 

I began to talk like a Jew. 

I think I may well be a Jew. 

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna 

Are not very pure or true. 

With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck 

And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack 

I may be a bit of a Jew. 

I have always been scared of you, 

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. 

And your neat mustache 

And your Aryan eye, bright blue. 

Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-- 

Not God but a swastika 

So black no sky could squeak through. 

Every woman adores a Fascist, 

The boot in the face, the brute 

Brute heart of a brute like you. 

You stand at the blackboard, daddy, 

In the picture I have of you, 

A cleft in your chin instead of your foot 

But no less a devil for that, no not 

Any less the black man who 

Bit my pretty red heart in two. 

I was ten when they buried you. 

At twenty I tried to die 

And get back, back, back to you. 

I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack, 

And they stuck me together with glue. 

And then I knew what to do. 

I made a model of you, 

A man in black with a Meinkampf look 

And a love of the rack and the screw. 

And I said I do, I do. 

So daddy, I'm finally through. 

The black telephone's off at the root, 

The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- 

The vampire who said he was you 

And drank my blood for a year, 

Seven years, if you want to know. 

Daddy, you can lie back now. 

There's a stake in your fat black heart 

And the villagers never liked you. 

They are dancing and stamping on you. 

They always knew it was you. 

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.


From The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath, Harper & Row 1981


So this poem has to be one of my favorite poems by Sylvia Plath. I know it seems creepy and almost masochistic, but hidden deep in the dark prose is a little bead of hope. Much of this poem is about the way the speaker's father was abusive, so she created herself "a model of you" and "said I do, I do." In essence, her father was abusive, so she found herself an abusive husband. The little grain of hope comes from the end, with the line "I'm finally through." This point turns the abuse from the present to the past, and makes it seem that she has broken off her relationship with this abusive husband. She also seems happy about it, acknowledging that "Daddy, you can lie back now," indicating that her father no longer controls her life. I think anyone who finds themselves in an abusive relationship can take solace in this poem, realizing that other people have been in the same situation, and perhaps for the same reason. These people were also able to find a way out of these relationships, so it is not a fruitless endeavor to work to better your life. Take heart, ye emburdoned friends, and carry thyselves to new and magnificent heights! (I have no idea why I decided to wax into Olde English, but it somehow fit the mood. I'm also writing this while listening to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, so that might have something to do with it.)

Anyway, another lesson I like to take from this poem is that even from the darkest things, we can still take something positive. This is an exceptionally dark poem; even so, it has a positive outlook in the end where people are able to better themselves, no matter the situation. I feel like this is a good way of thinking about things, no matter the situation. I hope all of you enjoy the rest of this wonderful Thursday and the rest of Poetry Month!

Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman

Galway Kinnell; After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

For I can snore like a bullhorn 

or play loud music 

or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman

and Fergus will only sink deeper 

into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash, 

but let there be that heavy breathing 

or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house 

and he will wrench himself awake 

and make for it on the run—as now, we lie together, 

after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies, 

familiar touch of the long-married, 

and he appears—in his baseball pajamas, it happens, 

the neck opening so small he has to screw them on— 

and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep, 

his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child. 

In the half darkness we look at each other 

and smile 

and touch arms across this little, startlingly muscled body— 

this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making, 

sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake, 

this blessing love gives again into our arms

from A New Selected Poems by Galway Kinnell, Houghton Mifflin, 2000

If anyone wants to hear it read aloud by Mr. Kinnell, go here

I just want to start off my saying happy birthday to my mom, and to apologize if I ever did this as a child. I personally love how much is crammed into this little poem, the imagery, and emotion. This poem wasn't written in 2000, it was written in the mid-1970s. Kinnell himself was a strong political and civil rights activist, as well as a globetrotter and appreciator of music. Many of his books, notably The Book of Nightmares (1971), are extremely politically relevant and focus deeply on the problems of the time. This poem holds little of the political nature of his other work. 

The most vivid part of this poem is the imagery. Not only the sexual imagery, but the imagery of the little six year old in the pajamas that are too small for him. I am currently young enough to remember a pair of pajamas that I had to wrestle over my head every time I put them on. But I loved them, so I kept wearing them until they became so threadbare that they were little more than rags of fuzz. That youthful exuberance and naivety tend toward the caring and maternal/paternal nature of the reader, rather than making us feel annoyed or angry (as most people would after being interrupted in this position). 

The other major point in this poem is the humor. It is supposed to be funny, with all the sarcasm and bantering. He qualifies sober with "reasonably," what is reasonable for an irishman? Probably not very sober at all. The sarcasm of "and he will wrench himself awake" resounds cleanly with the reader's sense of humor. Even the title, with its almost scandalous nature, provides some humor after we realize that the footsteps belong to a six year old. I personally thought it was going to be a cuckolded husband or something. Boy was I wrong.

There are a few key spots in the poem that I want to point out. 

First: "familiar touch of the long-married"

This line shows something very deep about this poem. Not only is this couple together and has a child, they have been married a long time, and still love and care for each other deeply. Not only do they not get disgruntled by their 6 year old (yes I looked that up) climbing into bed with them, it only serves to strengthen their relation as husband and wife.

Second: "and smile"

BAM! complete turnaround. The first part of the poem seems annoyed but understanding, with "but let there be... and he will wrench himself awake." This smile radiates the love that these two people share for each other, and it is because of this child and his childish ways that they are able to fell that so strongly at this moment. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this poem as much as I did, and I will see all of you again on THURSDAY!

Happy Poetry Month!

Signing off  ~Sam Zimmerman