"Purgatory is"

Here's a poem about waiting. DUH.

"Purgatory is"

Purgatory is

not a place where

bored brows line

blank walls.

Purgatory is

not a place where

heart monitors flatline,

perpetual and predictable.

Brows furrow;

hearts race;

and sweat pours

as we wait

Self-Portrait #1

This is the first draft of a poem I wrote a few hours ago. I haven't been posting to this blog very much in the past few months, school has been keeping me fairly preoccupied. However, I've been exercising my pen, if you will, a lot recently and plan to keep you posted with all of my practice, even if it isn't that great. With that said, here's a poem about growing up, something I've had to do a lot of lately.

Self-Portrait #1

The smooth cool steel of the razor

kisses the thistle slowly taking

my white cheek.

I watch the oscillating motion of

my wrist and note the bare patches

where once was bristle, in the mirror

a portrait of a weary young man

carefully swinging his scythe

exposing the hidden earth beneath,

clearing away the onset of old age

to bask in the youthful sun.

'Til the next morning when the sun rises anew

to reveal the futility of all prior labor;

barbasol in hand, still an old man.

Venom

I watch the snake whiskfully weave across the grass.
Slowly its wire body bends side
to side, like a paper clip bent outta
shape; it hovers across the green grass
on the lawn.

I am captivated by its motion, right and
left and right and
left again, as it grows larger, fleeing vanishing points
and all else behind it.

I am mesmerized be the dance and entranced
by the slow, simple rhythm; it smiles, flashing a gleam
of white, I am delighted --
struck! snagged by the serpentine tooth!

I fall to the ground, like a paper clip bent outta
shape; I sink into the green grass
on the lawn.

ED

The Painter

Here is a new poem. It's about art, and being an artist. Thanks goes out to IB English for opening my mind to a world of poems about poems and poets. Jolly good, enjoy.

"The Painter"

Each strand and
every sinew within
creaks and stretches so
deliberately as she gently
tickles the canvas with
her horsehair hands
immersed with emotion.

She steers strokes elegantly and
tiny little tracks bloom,
leaving behind bits
of color, fractions of flavor resting
contently atop the cloth.

All of her body's breath rushes
to her extremities as to not
limit her limbs while she slowly
extracts ideas from her
mind and pours them out onto the
canvas, gracefully charting the atlas
to her subconscious, like
Freud and Magellan would have.

She takes a  step back.
Cocks her head to the right; a chicken
observing a washing machine;
a frustrated sigh and a new canvas
are the fruits.

From the gallery,
all admire her failed
attempts.

ED

Coefficient of Static Friction

In this world, the laws of Physics govern our motion. Simple rules like, what goes up must come down, determine the way we experience the world around us. However, the more and more I live and experience this world that I am in, the more I find that these laws also tend to govern the way humans act, and the way events unfold.

This is especially pertinent with the idea of coefficients of friction. The coefficient of friction is simply a number that tells you how much a surface will resist a force applied to an object sitting on the surface. It pretty much lets you know how much extra oomph one must supply in order to get something to move when sitting on a surface. The coefficient of static friction represents how much force one must add in order to put something at rest into motion. This force is much higher than the force required to keep something moving on a surface with friction.

I feel that this is a theme that constantly occurs in life: it takes a lot of effort to get something going. There must be some sort of external motivation to inspire one to take any action; whether it be hunger inspiring eating, or hate inspiring violence, people only act when an outside force acts on them. However, it seems that whenever starting out on a new endeavor, it takes a ton of force to get things rolling. The school year just started for me and I'm trying to get back into the groove of things, but it seems as if the rites of summer have been etched into my frontal lobe, and I can't overcome them. It will take a good deal of force to overcome these habits and tendencies, but I know as school lingers on, these thoughts will dwindle and once again I will be back doing homework and acing tests -- it's simply physics.

This coefficient stands to show that not everything comes easy, and a little effort is required for anyone to get anything. Things don't just fall into your lap -- you have to work for them, and try for them. How else will you gather enough force to overcome your schema? Be motivated.

-Evan Dodd

Judgement

There are eyes all around,

surrounding us, peeping by a

creepy corner, darting through

the darkness, blinking flashes of

white ovals, sprinkled with red thread.

Big brother, with his everwatchful

eye, scanning each pace, scrutinizing

every last brittle bone of naked

figures shivering in the dark.

They silently move through the shadows,

each optical detector cataloging and

detailing defects – scars, pustules,

pimples, ingrown hairs, leaving scarcely

enough room to breath; these artists

with no place to fall, stand doomed,

hoping this judgement will soon draw to

an end – begetting only more

scrutiny. Helpless, frames fall to the floor

and refrain from rising, silently expecting

murmured mockeries as tears

puddle the floor.

ED

So I watched this movie

Kick-Ass should be renamed Suck-Ass.


ED