birds

Sitting, watching, twitching. Impatient with not a plan on the mind. It can't stand still for more than a second, it hops, and pecks, it flaps it's wings. It's gone. No. There it is again. This time perched on the tree. It falls to the ground, gracefully and unimaginable. Pecking and the ground, looking for something undesirable for us to think about. That worm, now in it's beak, is but a fraction of what we are. It is lifeless, although it is still crying for merciless freedom. And if the bird were to cut it in half, it was gain this freedom. Recreate its own form from the half. So is it less than we are? A human cannot live without half of its self, so why can that small, insignificant creature? It can, but it won't, not now. It is halfway digested, waiting to be regurgitated to the the mouths of those depending so desperately upon that bird.

Hurry hurry

I can't run in these shoes, there's too much to do. Everyone is laughing, and drinking, and smiling. But there's too much to do and I can't do it all in these shoes. So I'll take them off. Yea, that's better. Now I can move with the pace of the people. Now I can also laugh, and drink, and smile. I can stop for a bite to eat, but not too much, because there's to much to do. So little time, and it's not my time. It's his time, it's up to everyone else how this time is spent. Until we jump in the car and tell him to hurry, HURRY! O shit, we're late. But this is our chance. Now we can laugh, and drink, and smile. But only for a while longer, because tomorrow we'll be trapped.

A first American views his land

The audience is anyone who is reading the piece, but it seems to be directed towards people interested in native America. The purpose is to express the relation between a Native American and the land that he occupies. It portrays the respect that he has for the land, and how the relationship has changed over time. The major theme that stood out to me from this piece was the unification of man and land. One minor

Blood Dazzler too

I chose to write my poem after Patricia Smith's "What was the first sound" (pages 19-20). I like the style and repetition that she uses throughout to build a tension. Each individual stanza doesn't always have a strong imapct, but each one building on the previous creates a pressure throughout the poem that is released in the end when most of the main points are brought together. I based the context from a book that I read recently called Zeitoun. It is a book by Dave Eggers about a man who moved from Syria to New Orleans and stays behind in Hurrican Katrina to help his neighbors. After being in the town for some time after the hurricane, Zeitoun (the main character) is stopped at a property that he leased and arrested for suspicious activity. The book had an underlying focus on the sketchiness of national crisis relief in the Bush regime. Reading Blood Dazzler reminded me a lot of the book Zeitoun because the both focused on either controversial or unflattering tpics that aren't typically talked about. They both portray New Orleans as a real place, with pretty parts and ugly parts, and in a light that a lot of people probably don't see it in.

Blood Dazzler

TODAY I'LL PRAY

I'll wake up and face the west,
I'll kneel on both of my knees,
I'll thank the Lord.

I'll thank the Lord for getting my family out,
for leaving the dogs for company,
and for giving me work to do.

There's work to be done,
I must feed the dogs,
I must paddle in my little canoe and find people to save.

Now they say that people can't be saved,
not by me, not by a Syrian,
I must be bad.

I must be bad to have dark skin,
to stay behind in this disaster,
to paddle people in my little canoe from their torn homes.

From some torn home they watched me,
day in and day out,
for who knows how long.

Who knows how long they've been here?
Since before the storm?
Since we moved to this city?

Since we moved to this city I've feared this,
but there's nothing I can do,
especially now ,from this jail cell.

From this jail cell I have no family,
I have no past, no identity.
But from this jail cell I'll thank the Lord.

For my family's safety,

Today, tomorrow, and the next
I'll kneel on my knees while facing west

and pray.

Snapshot 3

I'll let the soft waves crash over my feet, then my legs, and finally my whole body. All i see now is blue, everything forever is a soft, and warm blue. Until I come up and turn around to see paradise laid out infront of me.

Snapshot 2

The sky isn't this blue back home, and the water not so clear. I don't have mountains or a village with cute cottages near my home. I don't have picturesque pubs, and wildflowers that blow freely in the wind. This should be my new home.