Oh yes, first year Life Sciences at U of T St. George will leave your GPA crippled and possibly crush your dreams. But the intensity does make things more interesting.
More importantly: since I've had to give up drama, art, and English in pursuit of higher education, I took a first year poetry course. Essentially, every person in this course should have a portfolio with 8 rough poems, 3 critiques of others' poems, 3 critiques of their own poems, 8 revised poems, and a 1000-word response on a poem by the end of the year. It's fascinating because you're put in a room with 22 peers who were just as tickled pink by the Poetry Unit in high school as you were. They are an endangered species.
I completed draft one of Poem #4 a week late two nights ago. (Of course, when I say "night" I mean early morning--you don't get much sleep after leaving the warm nest of high school.) It was inspired by a moment on a subway platform. Between this course and Latin, my writing has definitely changed; perhaps once I post the first three poems, one would be able to compare and discern a more obvious difference. Anywho, here it is:
Poem 4: Factory
The red eye of the sky flows down our backs
and pools on the sides of silver vessels.
We drip gray-green dread onto the dead day.
We let wasted breath collect our thoughts.
We collect dust.
Out of the darkness
a voiceless cry climbs the silence.
It worms its way
between
screeching steel & the hiss of hydraulics.
It plucks at our hairs
even as it falters in its flight.
What mournful notes.
But we do not falter. We sway. We stand.
The young are entranced.
They find themselves caught in that web
of feelings they do not know
(except what they catch in their elders’ eyes).
Thus they cling,
tenacious,
to the ground before the sound.
Beneath it all
are countless black cords,
one for each steadfast sentinel.
Once:
Each had snaked to a spring-green skull,
punctured:
fed live.
Swimming with unseen things,
their misty orbs had flickered.
--
Our vapour eyes open.
Speak:
“Mama.”
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I hope the almighty Tulmber (Hulme+Tumber) would approve of that one.
I promised myself sleep 19 minutes ago... it's too easy to break promises to yourself. Ah, well.
My next post will contain more personality. Scientific writing and a complete lack of all the boisterous good fun Gifties exude has contaminated me. I should stop using big words.
GOODNIGHT.
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