Junkyard Quote 6, Week 7

"I'm going to steal your Bones." - my boss at Turner saying to the other intern that she's going to steal the DVD of the show Bones that she was working on and let her do another show.

Junkyard Quotes 1-5, Week 7

"If I get nervous, I hold on to Jesus." - Kate Gervais talking about the rosary on her rearview mirror.

"...for some antihistamine reason." - Dr. Lipoma recovering from illness.

"I loved [Mel Gibson] so very much before he went quite mad." - Dr. Lipoma (for no real reason).

"Once she finds out that we have no power, we're fucked." - Tony Soprano talking to his wife about their daughter.

"In the early days of Facebook" - a student in Satan Comedy class.

Junkyard Quotes 1-5, Week 6

1. "architecture of the dead" - Dr. Erben discussing the work of H.D. Thoreau

2. "cup o' gum" - overheard in Grammar class

3. "They took the itchy stitches out of my butt" - medical show

4. "World's Dumbest Lovers" - topic of Valentine's Day episode of The Smoking Gun

5. "Men are mysogenistic man-pigs" - Savannah Smith discussing the topic of one of her Fall 2009 final papers

Improv/Imitation 2, Week 6

"Dear Reader"
What could I write that you have not already heard
in some form or another, though perhaps not in my
own personal words that slip "trippingly off the tongue,"
as Hamlet might inquire of an actor?

Perhaps you are an actor with your curtain rising and
never falling on the words of greater speakers than
those I could possibly give you to read or admire
in the light of the sound stage behind the director's
ever-watching, wary, leaning eye.

Perhaps you are the director, leering at that light
and willing it to drop as you would have it, though
you know that you can never be like Shakespeare,
and most certainly not like Hamlet. He was too much
your superior and mine to warrant a real consideration.
Or so the canon will eventually say.

Perhaps you are Hamlet, playing upon your own life's stage
as though maddened like a horror film supervillain trapped
by the hero behind a stage of faulty wiring and sparked
electrical outlets. Maybe, despite all your efforts to make
a show of insanity, your mind really has gone the way of the
flattened hills that used to be your hometown, your castle,
your never-ending reading adventure.

Improv/Imitation 1, Week 6

"People want four things."
But Larwrence E. Man wants sixteen,
while Mary W. Man wants only two.
Whose most lighted-from-inside skeleton
can swipe like a hammer through any one
person's streaming arms?
They reach like his son reached for
the only baseball he owned, playing
with the only father he owned, whose
glove obscured the only hand he owned.
She only reads stories by authors
whose names begin with D, though the
one and only Dostoyevsky still favors
her when she flips his pages like the
hairs of her only daughter, upon
the pillow of the only other bed
in the only other bedroom in the house.

Strategy Response, Week 6

In his poem "Simon Peter," John Poch interestingly incorporates both poetic and Biblical elements. Though classical in the sense that the Bible is written in verse, contemporary poetry often eschews religious meaning in any of its subjects, particularly such drastic topics as Poch takes on in this poem. Not only does the poem consider ramifications and rewards of Christianity, but it does so from the first-person voice of one of Christ's apostles, Simon Peter.

The poem is separated into two sections, the first depicting the night that Jesus was captured by the Romans and brought to trial. As Jesus predicted, Simon Peter denies him three times before the rooster crows. The second part shows Peter's reaction upon hearing from Mary Magdalene that Jesus has risen again, this time his emotion both starkly different and yet oddly similar. For example, in the first section, the "I" (presumed to be Simon Peter in the context of the poem) denies his association with Christ and even makes light of the fact that the men with whom he speaks mistake him for an apostle. He stays and jokes with them until dawn, when he hears the rooster crow, at which time the imagery gives the reader the distinct feeling of regret: "We gossiped till the cock crowed, / his head a small volcano raised to mock stone." Peter expresses initial levity in speaking with the men who accused him, but as soon as he hears the rooster, he imagines its destructiveness and the implications of his denial of Christ. Likewise, the second section expresses his joy upon realizing that Jesus has resurrected, and yet a similar tone of darkness hangs over the poem, as the very first line expresses doubt: "Who could believe a woman's word, perfumed / in death?" He does, however, come to believe Mary and runs to the grave, where he finds no body. Believing someone has stolen his master, he sneaks away to weep and upon seeing Jesus later that evening sneaks away again to the sea, where so many of his lessons were learned. Again, despite Peter's joy at Christ's return, the poem ends very somberly: "The fire before me, the netted fish / behind. I'm carried where I will not wish."

Therefore, John Poch incorporates poetic and Christian ideas very well into his poem "Simon Peter" and even expresses the sincerety with which his apostles worshipped him through the first-person voice of Simon Peter himself and two very significant Biblical moments in the fisherman's life. The poem also does not ultimately decide for or against religion, as it expresses in both sections joy and regret in terms of belief in Jesus. Interesting that a contemporary poet could so easily mesh two seemingly opposite themes.

Free Entry 2, Week 6

Bristles fall into my eyes as I lie supine
on what used to be a bed but now resembles
a garden of rotting vegetables, while above
drums beat metronomically at my ceiling light,
wishing that they could breathe through like
the wind instruments do, so well.

A chair rocks while the bed squeals and howls
and begs for the deaf people to cease their
fighting against its face, gasping for breath
just as they do, once in a while.

I close my eyes against the purple speckles
that usually indicate sickness but now only
mean that I have missed out on something,
something above me that whistles to the tune
of some unknown Disney song, and diamond
mines don't, more often than not.

Three more squeaks penetrate my wall before one
last groan of the bedsheets and carpets to the
music that they thought they made, but only the
real saxophonists do, at all.