"In our darkest hours we have all asked for some angel to come sprinkle his dust all around..."

A perhaps little-known fact: Freshman year I had General Psych with... I no longer remember his name but he was Polish.  In any case, every class he presented us with his typed notes, usually a 20-30 page bundle. For each class.  So, even though most of the information was so basic that I didn't need the notes, I saved them for use as scrap paper rather than throwing them out.  I put them in the back of my archive folder so, with the exception of the Metaphysics poetry, most of what I've written since has been on the back of these notes. It sometimes yields an interesting subtext and, this past time, inspired a little introspection.

The previous poem (see post below) was written on the last page of a study guide, and the title of this current poem is the last question from that guide. I realize that it's long, and a somewhat pretentious thing to name a fourteen-line poem, but I wanted to include the full context of what spawned my subsequent meditation.

This one has two Shakespearean quatrains and an Italian sextet.  I like the first quatrain a lot. I have been trying to break my habit of ending sentences or phrases with linebreaks because I think that it, overall, makes for a more interesting, less stilted sound.  I only really managed that in the first one though.  The quatrains flowed without much difficulty, but the sextet was harder.  In part because I wasn't sure how well it fit with the quatrains thematically (although it followed fairly directly in my mind) and in part because it was simply something that was hard for me to write.  But you all know what to expect from me by now.

"72. Define similarity, closure, continuation and nearness as they pertain to perception." -3/11/09

I came at You with eyes flung open wide.

With elbows locked, I felt around for such

a thing as curled fingers may abide,

but I found nothing dead enough to touch.

I came at You as if You were a thought.

I tried to box You in with ev'ry tool

but, when I looked inside the cage I'd wrought,

found nothing dead enough to heed my rule.

I'm told that You are close to me in kind:

that I, from clay, was in Your image set.

But You're a spirit that I cannot see,

a word that will not fit inside my mind

and, worst of all I have not uttered yet,

a Father who so scarce resembles me.

"Cause this is nothing like we'd ever dreamt, tell Sir Thomas More we've got another failed attempt..."

-L