The Poppy and the Pansy

Quiet, the Poppy walked into the room;
her sight so soft and delicately hued.
Silence hung in the air, fragrance imbued.
Chills spread, ripples of her softest perfume.

The tired old cantank'rous Cattle, whom
if he's observed is shown as coarse and lewd,
hides his face, and like all of those so shrewd,
appears to be a flower, full in bloom.

Now if this Bull was naught but coarsely grown
the Poppy must refuse the Bull's advance,
for if the Bull's allowed a second thought
the Pansy's love is caught twixt fought and flown.
And Poppy's life now ever shall be caught
in Cattle's hell, bereft of Pansy's chance.

So, I apologize for missing my post on Thursday, it was kind-of a hectic day and I didn't get time to post. This poem I decided to write after reading a novel about a woman with two suitors. The novel was all about the story from the woman's point of view, so I wanted to throw in a poem about the story from the suitor's perspective. In the novel the suitors didn't really have characters, they were more images or symbols than people, and I felt that rather unfair. Yes, I know, this usually occurs with the genders switched around, but it does happen this way so don't snark at me about it. 

I don't know how many of readers have experienced this situation in their life, but I have on multiple occasions. There are a few times where I've finally plucked up the courage to ask someone out, only to find that they're already taken. Once it happened before I actually asked her, but the other times I had have the awkward "Oh, well, I'm already taken" conversation. If you haven't already experienced this, I envy you and hope you never have to. Anyway, enough jibber-jabber for now. See you all tomorrow with another poem! Happy Saturday 

Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman

peppercorn

fool thinking a blushing arm that bent
round you in bed, that would extend to me

across a room still crowded with the breath
of friends and pet the dizzy hair above

my pretty little head, could help defend
or even wave away the tiny mess

of rainclouds and the slush-stained galoshes
from the snow globe in my chest

my life is energy dispersed as waves
in a hundred million years I will 

explode into a retarded smudge of protons
and reform into cast-away planets

full of dust-choke and nebula-bound sky where
the highs and lows no longer bear the sayable

but I'll hold on like a sinner to a prayer
like the humble flint in an old man's eyes

with bones bent forward leaning
in osteoporosis reaching for a little more

but living is no reason to continue, everything
begins and everything is desperate

****


Guys, tomorrow is Friday. I'm so thankful. 

The weather is so nice today and I'm really happy about that too. It was the Rochester wind that drove me inside to finally get work done and I poem instead oops.

The first part of this poem is about the past. It's pertinent for today I suppose. 

The middle part is about the future, and how people don't really matter, and if there is any meaning, there are no words for it. 

The end is what humans do, we hold onto every little thing and make something so important out of it, whether it has significance or not. Perhaps it out of stubbornness, perhaps out of not wanting it to be proven nothing matters. 

Things matter, I think you can make meaning out of things but they can only have meaning to you. Like I have a bouquet of roses in my room that are dead and wilted but I keep them because of the memories; to everyone else they are probably seen as trash. Plus, I've had experiences that I can't really explain to other people because I know they wont understand, they wont be impacted by the experience or feel the significance because it's mine. 

"All men have the stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travellers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all the stars are silent. You--you alone--will have the stars as no one else has them." ~The Little Prince

For those of you who haven't read this book it's fantastic. It's a French children's story actually, but it's really philosophical and has a lot of depth. To me, it's the meaning of life. Genius. 

That's all for today. Have a great Friday tomorrow, you deserve it. Godspeed. ~Sarah

William Carlos Williams: The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I know. Late again. Bahhh. Was busy multivariabling last night, but I probably could've done this at some other point in the day.



So in my late desperation this morning (in which I should be studying for that same multivariable) I flipped open John Green's The Fault in Our Stars with the intention of finding this poem, but ending up going too far and just reading the ending which was making me extremely sad. For those of you have read it (I think you should if you haven't, although I disagree with Isaac's sentiments on love, and his opinions annoy me a bit now) I'd say it was one of the sad parts with Hazel and her parents. Bad idea to read, I haven't seen my mother in months and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to see her this summer. (My folks moved to Arizona, I'm going back to my hometown outside of Buffalo. This stupid summer coming up.) This is a poem the Hazel says at one point to try and distract Gus, because it is a poem she remembers, although all she says on it is, "Williams was a doctor. It seemed to me like a doctor's poem." She's a little bit busy at this point in the book, so I'll excuse her for not going on a long rambling spiel about it. When I was looking it up I thought it had been an ee cummings poem, but I guess not.



I think it's simplicity that really makes this poem stand out. In trying to remove the formatting after copy/pasting it in this post it all turned into one singular line of text, yet it doesn't feel any less than a full poem.


That, and it's really vibrant, I think. A weird word to use on a poem, but the red wheelbarrow and the white chickens really stand out. Those two lines really contribute to the imagery, but I think it's the "glazed with rain water" that really seals the deal. Now that it's raining here a lot, I'm used to that thin layer of water that covers the benches and things after it's rained. "Glazed" is a good way for Williams to put it.

Why does so much depend on this red wheelbarrow? A lot depends on all the little things in our lives. Sam left his laptop in the lounge late at night a couple of days ago, so I took it and returned it to him on academic side the next day. He hadn't even noticed it was missing which surprised me, because my laptop takes up the dead center of my desk, which, at the end of the room by the window, is kind of unavoidable. If it weren't there and it should be I'd be freaking out. I'm stupid enough to have gotten myself locked out of the room a few times this year, except by now Emily is smart enough to not lock the door even when she's leaving if my keys are sitting on my desk. During our CS Midterm Adam was just starting to get sick and was dying with his nose running, sitting next to me during the exam, but I was able to help him out a little bit with some of the tissues in my purse. Adam, in his own right, can use his phone to access his desktop, submit our CS project, and code in C. (He has an iPhone though... Android all the way haha).

So while I think being materialistic is pretty bad, we have to acknowledge that sometimes it's the little objects in our lives that get us through. The red rain soaked wheelbarrow, so that we may feed our white chickens. I think I'll wear one of my flower hair berets today. They're pretty, and they kind of make me happy to wear. I've been complimented on them, so I guess other people do too.

It's always the little things.

I'm going to be late to Spanish,

-Val

Emily Kagan Trenchard - In Which I Call Upon Tycho Brahe

In Which I Call Upon Tycho Brahe


Tell them about your pet moose
that got so drunk at your party it fell down the stairs
and broke it’s foreleg.
Tell them about the instruments.

Tell them about the nights you stood with chin
pointing to the heavens and lips quietly mouthing
the positions of the stars. Tell them the stars
are not just stars. The heavens, neither perfect nor immutable.

Tell them about your nose, sliced off in a duel,
and how you covered the windy hole in your face with a brass replica,
lashed it to your head with leather straps,
kept it and the twitching raw skin beneath well greased.

Tell them how you taught a generation to see. Tell them
two good eyes were all you needed to chart the heavens,
and for everything else, there was your psychic midget named Jep.
Tell them the answers are there, in the charts.

Tell them about the commoner you refused to actually marry,
though she gave you 8 children and wore the keys to your castle on her belt.
Tell them at their death stars, too, do not go quiet; they are as furious
and destructive as drunken men of means; they all fall in on themselves.

Tell them how you passed on those charts like Pandora. Like, what now?
Like the boy Kepler could be anything other than what history needed.
Tell them those ellipses were drawn from his gaping mouth.
Tell them you were for Kepler, as Kepler was for Galileo, and how

he cracked open the head of a God by smashing it against the sky.
Tell them how you loved a good party.
Tell them how the wild and ethereal world
is always in attendance.


Hello everyone! I figured as I've been doing some fairly heavy poetry recently, I'd do something a little more lighthearted today, and what's more lighthearted than picking on Tycho Brahe and everything that was wrong in his life. Brahe was kind of a mean person, especially his habit of getting in fights with anyone who disagreed with him, and his lack of ability to socialize beyond stargazing. As the poem says, he did have a lover who bore him eight children, though he would not marry her because she was a commoner. I just wanted to post something to brighten everyone's day, so have fun reading and go out and enjoy the brief moments it's not raining here in Rochester.

Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman

John Donne: The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deny'st me is;

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea, our two bloods mingled be;

Thou knowest that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead.

Yet this enjoys before it woo,

And pampered, swells with one blood made of two,

And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, yea, more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;

Though parents grudge, and you, we are met

And cloistered in these living walls of jet.

Though use make you apt to kill me,

Let not to that self murder added be,

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be

Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?

Yet thou triumph'st, and sayest that thou

Find'st not thyself, nor me, the weaker now.

'Tis true, then learn how false fears be;

Just so much honor, when thou yieldst to me,

Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

John Donne just hit on a girl using a flea as a metaphor. That girl wasn't having any of it and killed the flea, so take that John Donne. You're not getting any today my friend.

I'm not really sure what else I want to comment on this. John Donne is really kind of huge in poetry, but I only know him because in a Scholarship Essay for the Exchange Club of the Tonawandas (Shoutout, didn't win the main prize but they as an organization were very nice to me and the other people I knew who were Student of the Month) I tried to use "No man is an island" as a proverb, and one of the ladies from our local group of the Exchange Club who were kind of our mentors  scolded me for not giving Donne the proper credit. When I expressed my surprise that it wasn't just some anonymous proverb she kind of went on a John Donne spiel in which she mentioned this poem because, and absolutely no disrespect here, she is clearly one of those people who is at the age where they don't really have the most concern for prudence anymore. I wish I could remember her name because she was really awesome. She apparently taught English at Tonawanda for almost a decade, and still cared deeply about Tonawanda as a community, which was nice. The fact that she thanked us for not being as snobby as NT didn't hurt either, hahaha.

But yeah, other thoughts on this poem are that the more things change, the more they really kind of stay the same. Silly guys will try and get girls by saying stupid things. I remember my English teacher Mr. Mercer always trying to highlight how bawdy William Shakespeare was. I think when you're first starting Shakespeare it's kind of a surprise how racy he really is. I mean, think of the porter complaining about alcohol affecting his love life in Macbeth. Shakespeare's happy to go there, to walk that line, and it's not surprising, because Shakespeare was a twenty year old guy. Granted, a really talented, eloquent, twenty year old man who deeply understood the human condition and was deft at social satire- but he was still a twenty year old guy who made penis jokes. Mr. Mercer would have you know he was actually quite good at it. Right now I am likewise reminded of Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream messing up his line and saying that the lion deflowered poor Thisby.

The fact that guys haven't changed doesn't make it any less amusing to watch John Donne hit on a girl while using rhyming language like "Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pampered, swells with one blood made of two,". But at the same time, it's kind of nice to be reminded, even with silly things like this, that people haven't changed all that much throughout the centuries.

Nobody's used any insect metaphors on me yet, so I guess that's reassuring.

Dulce Et Decorum Est ~ Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.


This is another poem that I found thanks to a class, and I am quite thankful for that. Wilfred Owen was a sad story. He spent his early life in school to become a poet, and he met quite a few professionals who enjoyed his poetry. Unfortunately he was in college at just the wrong time to be drafted into WWI. He fought the war while still writing poetry and sending them back to his family, who compiled them into a book for him. He died in the war, one week before the armistice was signed. A large amount of his poetry gives vivid descriptions of the war and of the death and destruction therein. I won't write too much about this poem, as it does a fairly good job speaking for itself. I will say this though, if you can read this, and still feel that war is a good option, you should read it again, and again, and again. Read it so many times that you close your eyes and can see the frothing figure on the cart, writhing in agony, and slowly dying from the inside out. Then tell me war is a good option.

Signing off ~ Sam Zimmerman

Coming Home

Memories leave a bad taste in my mouth

That tequila went down so smooth long ago

But leaves a bitter odor on my lips this morning

And a raging creature pounding in my head

The ghost of you is everywhere

You’re voice rides along the ocean breeze

Brushing my face softly, caressing my poor soul

It’s not the salt in my eyes that triggers a tear

You cut my hair like Samson’s

And no one could doubt you improved me

You made me your own, but without a column

What am I suppose to hold onto?

Maybe I shouldn’t have told you anything

For you’d rather the history books forget

But I can’t destroy the memories, I am weak

Clinging only to the wind and empty sheets

Happy Sunday erryone! Hope you're ready for Monday (cuz I'm totally not, lol oops). 

For a lot of people, especially college students, going home is the best thing in the world. And yeah I can agree it's pretty great, I love seeing my mom and sister, and my dad too. They are all so wonderful and supportive and I couldn't get through a day without thinking about them. Recent days have been really stressful and calling my mom and sis really helped. My friends too. I miss them to death and I can't wait until summer break to go and see them. There's just a lot of people I need back in my life who are miles away. There's one person specifically that I haven't seen since Christmas break and it's driving me insane. I'm glad I'll get to see them in, like, 5 weeks I think though. 

But there are, how to put this, bad memories in that house. My room specifically. I hate my room because that's where I went throughout my middle school and high school life when I felt lonely and sad and depressed and anxious. And now it's as if the walls have absorbed that and are now emanating it.

I've always found the story of Samson really interesting. As a kid I remember learning that he couldn't cut his hair or have wine or else he'd lose his strength. I think it's actually cut his hair and women? I don't know, there are a lot of variations. The main point is the hair. According to scriptures, a temptress named Delilah seduced him and cut his hair causing him to lose all of his powers. His weakness was women and he couldn't see the trap that had been laid for him so that he couldn't destroy the columns or something like that (Idk the story 100%). 

But let's think about that. I think all adults, at least men (some ladies), have an affinity for wine and women. And it seems to me that that is what adulthood is about, or at least it plays a significant roll. It also means responsibility, accountability, and other things but I want to save this theme for another post. God gave Samson strength and told him the parameters, but what is a meer mortal to God? I don't care if you're athiest or not, but gods do not fall to pressure, they just don't. Humans do: they are imperfect. Just because they are created to God's image, doesn't mean that they perform the same actions. Gonna throw some science at this situation and say just because they have the same genotype doesn't mean they have the same phenotype.

Anyway, Samson told Delilah that his weakness was hair and she cut it. 

There's a song called "Samson" by Regina Spektor (aka one of the best artists in my opinion). Here are part of the lyrics:

Oh I cut his hair myself one night

A pair of dull scissors in the yellow light

And he told me that I'd done alright

And kissed me 'til the mornin' light, the mornin' light

...

Oh, we couldn't bring the columns down 

Yeah we couldn't destroy a single one

And the history books forgot about us

And the bible didn't mention us, not even once

You are my sweetest downfall

I loved you first

It is apparent that the songs is sung by Delilah. But it is not sung by a temptress. It is not sung by an evil women. They seem to have a relationship, they seem to love each other through this. And he doesn't seem to care that his hair has been cut. He likes it. He doesn't want the responsibility to have God-like strength. He wants to be human, he wants to have Delilah, and is that so terrible?

Another song is Hallelujah (where the best version, again my opinion, is the one by Jeff Buckley) where he sings,

But remember when I moved in you

And the holy dove was moving too

And every breath we drew was Hallelujah. 

Every breath they drew was Hallelujah. That sounds heavenly, that sounds rejoicing. There's nothing wrong in loving someone and loving someone so much that you'd give up anything to be with them, including a God-given gift. But this poem, the one I wrote forever ago before this rant happened, is about how, yes, I let someone cut my hair (metaphorically and physically-ish) and yeah, I came to actually prefer it. I didn't mind that they changed me in fact I like to think that they made me a better person, a stronger person than before. Maybe Samson felt that way too, that Delilah made him a better person. It's when she left him that he lost his strength. 

So this has turned into analyzing a biblical story so I'm going to stop now. But please, let me know what you think, of the poem or the analysis in the comment section.

I hope you all have a great week and I'll post again soon-ish. (I'll try not to make it so long next time). 

Godspeed. ~Sarah