some poet

Since I am in a poetry writing class this semester, I foresee a significant increase in my poem production rate. I thought I'd post them here as I write them for anyone who cares to read.

The first day of class our teacher asked us to think about an abstract question that we might have been carrying around in our minds lately and then to write it down on a piece of paper. After that, we folded it in half and passed it one person to our right. After writing a random object on the bottom half of the paper, we passed it once more to our right. Our assignment was then to write a poem connecting the two seemingly unrelated phrases. This is how mine turned out:

The Audience Ponders
In what language to musicians think?
Sitting together under stage lights,
Writing alone in some back corner,
Banging pots together in the early evening,
Waiting on the pavement for someone else to notice
The smell before the rain.
01.15.09

This was the assignment due in class yesterday, where you had to pick one thing you love and another that you hate, then write a poem connecting the two.

Natives
The exoskeleton of darkened glass and metal hides the rider,
But cannot stop whispered words of war suggested by painted cheeks
Or the oversized tires humming a tom-tom beat on the road.

Leather second skin covers my feet, and the smooth sides echo
Every other pair, modern clones of a culture preserved by the brains
of men
Who confine life to pottery shards and mock scenes of home.

How will future generations piece together our devotion to off-road
vehicles,
Or our own assembly line of stitched leather slippers for the fashion
tribe?
01.20.09