2nd Quarter Poetry Journal Reflection ｷｬｯ♪o((〃∇〃o))

Cake

I am half a sparkle on the gilt edge,

the flesh of a living charm.

We knit our warmth with needles,

the sweater that wraps

around the circle of our touching shoulders like a shawl.

 

I live in a land

of three-letter acronyms

we juggle back-ack and forth-orth like a game.

 

I am zapped to life by the swish of the baton,

jitter-itter and chug like a wind-up toy,

but the gears and springs inside me,

they’re silver and gold.

 

I used to be one of Them, sputter-uttering,

on the outside,

pointing, dry cracked lips,

faces tinted chartreuse,

pounding bloody cracks in the fiberglass windows

wail-wailing-ing please let me in-in--

 

But the sweater muff-uffles the voices of Them now,

sympathy drained.

It’s warm and snug in here,

No room for more.

Jitter-itter-chug, it’s all that matter-atters.

 

Let them eat cake.

This is kind of a weird poem. I forget what it was inspired by. (Of course it was inspired by me. *round of applause*) I do remember I pulled the lines "knit warmth with needles" and "wraps around shoulders like a shawl" from a poem we read (I don't quite remember which one), and "they're silver and gold" from a Lorde song, because, Lorde.

I dreamed up the idea for this poem during orchestra class (because, we all agree, I never pay enough attention when playing violin wrong notes WHAT ARE THESE WRONG NOTES YOU SPEAK OF). I was thinking about how people who get what they want (or are in the upper crusts of society), being content and unconsciously self-absorbed, pay no attention to those below them, who would give anything to be in the same situation. People are so blinded by the fulfillment of their own wants that they do not realize that there is a world outside of that little gilt edge, that little inner circle in orchestra where the conductor waves the baton into their faces, when that outside world is where they themselves had previously been. I was am was guilty of this too.

The last line is an alleged quote from Marie Antoinette, spoken when a herd of irascible peasant women stormed into the Palace of Versailles wail-wailing-ing for bread. I thought this would tie in well, because she showed indifference for the peasant's suffering, much as the elite in society (or school) today are indifferent toward the suffering of others who get it rougher. (I crossed that out because I think it's self-explanatory but Mrs. Leitsch wants me to elaborate on specific decisions-isions I made during the writing process so I'll spell it out.)

Something else new I tried during my revision process with this poem is I added a bunch of repeated syllables in selected words, set off by hyphens, such as "back-ack and forth-orth" and "jitter-itter-chug". These were meant to be kind-of-but-not-really-onomatopoeia, like we saw with that one poem called "Interchange", except a little differently. I guess what I wanted to show was the constant, repetitive nature of the cycle of nonchalance, and plus it sounds cool, so I decided to go with it.