H.U.M.A.N.

You
I see you
Every one of you, with your bright eyes
With your dreams painted in the irises
Every one of you with your lives written
In the wrinkles of your forehead
In the scars on your knees
In the color of your fingernails
Every one of you with your love hidden
In the shadows of your eyelashes
With your fear carved
In the creases of your curled fists
With your sorrow shining
On the white of your wrists
Every one of you with your flaws etched
Into your past,
Your past chiseled in stone,
Once a tabula rasa
Now smeared with sweat and tears and blood
And scribbled hearts and little notes
Simply from existing in this world.
Every one of you
 
I love you.
For being

Humble and
Undying.
Man may never
Attain
Near perfection

 Not to a T. Not by experiments, not by learning, not by trying.

But I see it.
In your eyes. In your skin.
In your hair, your heart, your soul,
The tornadoes coming from your lungs and
The footprints you leave behind in dew-covered grass and
The clouds your head has drifted in and
The imprint of the setting sun in the shadows of your fingertips
 
I love you
So please stay
 
Here
Under
My
Abstract
Notions

So that you can be sheltered
By the blanket of my hopes for you
And always know that I have faith.
 
I have faith in you, so you should too.
Have faith in the quiet in your mind.
In the touch of a leaf on a pond,
Sending ripples up your skin like Morse code
Telling you to smile like you mean it
Because behind the pearls we’ve waited so long for
Lies your voice
Your vehicle, your little boat
And it’s tied to the dock of your self-doubt
Of your impatience, your insecurities, your anger,
By a rope I’ve been trying to wear thin
Through the razor blades of my tongue
And if nothing else, let those blades cut
Into your lungs so that
Even if you won’t speak, you can
Breathe.

Humanity
Underlies
Most of
All our waking
Nightmares

But

Hearts with
Untouched
Memories and
Ageless faith
Never die out

And hearts must have humans to live,
And humans must have hearts to love,
And if humanity is the heart of our existence,
Then the heart of our humanity is hope.

So you,
With the eyes glowing with wildfire
And a fear of the future and need of the past,
You
With the fists like fireworks
And the mouths like minefields
You
With the backbone of a bombshell
And the healing bruises on your ego
You
With the childish wonder in the corner of you eye
And the kiss in the corner of your lips
And the voice
Hidden like a prima Donna behind the curtain before her biggest show
Loud as thunder, but buffered by the clouds
With your pearls still clasped in the clam of your anxieties

Take a deep breath
And hope.
- Olivia Rowland (Spring 2011)

Pianoetforte: 230 Strings

If eyes are the window to the soul
Then the path to my heart is paved in ebony and ivory keys
And you are the only pianist in the room
That’s what I am: Your sweet instrument.
I can’t help if that makes me your toy as well

You can make me sing with just the lightest of touches
And make me scream when you’re at your roughest
But like an instrument I only yearned to be played
And play you did just as if you had taken a sharpie
And drawn your keyboard from my shoulder blade to my ankle

You didn’t mind if that meant that you used me
Didn’t matter because it meant nothing to you just something to pass the time
Nothing mattered to you, you who yearned for nothing
Burned for nothing, you the picture of equanimity

You and your pitch perfect ears
Yet you always made me out of tune
Sharp in your presence and flat in your absence
But you went ahead with your velvet hammer
Beating away at my steel strings
Twisting your tuning wrench around and around
To tighten my wires getting the tension just right
230 strings of love
each string strained by 165 pounds of tension
But that 18 ton tension just made me want you even more
Made me desire for you to run your fingers up and down my keys
Play me over again and again allegro to see how fast your fingers can race
Later we can retardando and waltz in largo and ¾ time
One two three one two three one two three one two three

I deserved it though after all the toil of carrying your emotions
Flowing them through piano to forte with fine crescendos
And soothing them back down in finessed diminuendos
I took the blunt force of your staccatos
Why couldn’t you just loosen up my strings
Even if it means I’ll run a little flat
Play me in minor and let every note legato when my moods are melancholy to help me express my sentiments
Play me in major and play a fanfare to represent my smile
Play me for me don’t play me because you’re bored
That’s all I ever wanted all I ever craved
For you to be my piano man
 - Nicole Cochran (Spring 2011 - Kicking the Cliche: Love Poems)

Spirit (Bahnhof)

When they weaved youth into the pattern of her skin
They forgot to lace love into her blood veins.
Devils waited at her doorstep with baited breath,
But she escaped through the window every night,
Scraping her knees on broken inhibitions
And still running faster, faster...

Faster

The number of miles to freedom
Could only be measured by a Richter scale
Because every footfall was light
But the butterfly effect turned them into earthquakes.

Her world was the Bahnhof
And the locomotive she rode the roof of every night
Glided smoothly along tracks of broken dreams,
Forgotten promises, and golden butterflies,
on wheels of memories.

No matter how many times she fell off,
Her pride was never scratched, it was only made thicker.
She would only climb back on with scabbed knees
And ride until morning.

The locomotive never stopped, but blew its ghostly whistle
And she knew when to jump.
She climbed back into the window and opened the door.
The devils turned to angels of anarchy
And she plucked a feather from a dark wing
And engraved life in her forearm
Where it could flow to her heart.

She was an apparatus, made of night, feathers, and butterflies
Weaved together with threads of a spider's web.
Dew was the water in her eyes
And the train ran through her veins.

And when the sun dared poke its head from behind train-tracked hills
She caught fire in a heartbeat
She burned and settled on the doorstep of the locomotive
And she rose from the ashes
And joined Icarus in the sky.
 - Olivia Rowland (Fall 2010 - Hate Your Neighbors)

Cinderella

"The clothes I wore

Just don’t fit my soul anymore."

My heart has outgrown my shoes

and my emotions are spilling

out of my shirt like cleavage.

My dreams have been weighed down

by all the rocks that have been thrown at my bedroom window.

So now I dream about riding away

in a pumpkin-turned-princess carriage

with my perfect Prince Charming

and we will live happily ever after.

But they say a dream is merely a wish your heart makes.

Well, my heart has been wishing for quite some time now

and I’m still stuck in this tiny little cottage

in this the middle of this tiny little village.

A place too small for it’s population,

A place where popularity is a necessity,

but God is an option.

This is where fairy tales are just books

in a world where nobody reads

and although I long to live in a land far, far away,

I am just the girl next door,

who can wish as many times as she wants,

but whose fairy godmother just never shows up.

And my name must taste good

Cause it’s always in somebody’s mouth

And those who talk about me

Only use the words “that girl”

That girl

The one with stringy brown hair

The one who wears too much makeup

The one who goes through each day

   pretending to be something she’s not.

But how do they know if I’m pretending

   if I’ve been pretending from the start?

My life has never known uphill

Because each time I fail to hold myself together

and my heart spills off of my sleeve

shattering on the ground,

I, once again, sweep up the pieces,

form makeshift ventricles

and place it gently back into my chest

to let it begin its next decline.

I am not perfect,

but I decided long ago

that I will always allow myself

to keep falling for the endless lies and

deceit of the corrupt universe we call home.

Because you never know.

Maybe Prince Charming does exist…
- Analeigh Barnes (Fall 2010 - Bucket Lines)

Crickets and Other Evening Deities

It has been said that when a caged hummingbird cries,
crickets and other evening deities still their legs
to calm their song.
The silence becomes a lyrical eulogy, in which trees and nests can mourn
the loss of their winged brother.
Even the malicious vultures pause on the horizon with a pang in their cold hearts.

In the city of New York, where mutiny and arson make poetry,
the music of animals reflects
away from us.
Our contents include more alcohol and ignorance than bumblebees,
and I like to assume that God
made this a special place for the lonely.
A special place where love is nothing but a rare disorder
or a story you read in a book and then reread for clairty.
The story of a beggar living in a box, and a woman who works in an office.
And you remember that story, because that couldn't happen, no, never.
Not in a place where broken promises are more common than commas.
Not in a place where beauty is a retrospective concept.
Not in a place where you can barely see the sky.

You can't fall in love if you can't hear the hummingbird cry.
- Sara Beth Palmer (Spring 2011 - Forcing the Wall)

Her Life Anew

Her mind is lost in a desert.

Suffocating in its own curiosity and doubt,

and her heart is disintegrating

as it beats, black and blue.

The noise of cosmic love nestles itself around her neck

as she tries to find the answers to life

in the text of a word search puzzle.

Someone in particular soaked her soul in gasoline and set it on fire.

But, don’t you worry dear, the soft flames won’t burn for long.

The thieving wind smiled down on her

and stole her burdens away from her shoulders,

pushing her into a pond full of harmony and order.

She bathed herself with innocence

and came up to the surface gasping for air

with only a movie ticket

in hand.

12:03 PM

She opened her wet eyelashes and it felt like May again.

Birds were singing from A to Z

and the shining sun greeted her fair skin with glowing rays.

Her mind has been set free from the over-rated idea of

love

which she defined now

as bullshit.

And her newly renovated heart found peace with simplicity.

She will no longer live in a closet

full of striped sweaters and fake fortune cookies,

but instead,

in a treehouse

where two hearts will meet and entwine

becoming the same thirsty heartbeat.

She will find reassurance in those crescent moon eyes of his

and comfort in the warm kisses that translate

into a new language that speaks directly

to her soul.

She’ll forget the wrong and paint the new,

in the same treehouse

where she hears Mumford & Sons sing

“The time we were given will be left for the world. The flesh that lived and loved will be eaten by the plague. So let the memories be good for those who stay.”
- Karley Sanders (Fall 2010 - Roadblock)

...And so it begins.

Ever since the first time I stood in front of a classroom of teenagers and attempted to work through a unit of poetry with them, one thing has become quite clear. Students have a really odd and fascinating relationship with poetry. During the spring semester of 2008, I asked students to answer a simple question: "What comes to your mind when you think about the word "poetry." The answers stunned me. I had always been quite interested in poetry, completing my first poem when I was like eight years old and all I could do was model everything after the country songs my grandmother would play in her tan Chevrolet Blazer. However, my students - Creative Writing students nonetheless - overwhelmingly disliked poetry. In fact, one student put it on par with ripping his own teeth out with a pair of pliers. Another simply turned in a sheet of paper that just read "No." As a student teacher, I was terrified. I had spent an entire semester scheming up a billion and one ways to present poetry to my Creative Writing students (who, in my mind, SHOULD HAVE LOVED POETRYALREADY), and, sitting in front of me, was a pile of student responses claiming that poetry, in general, sucked. Hard. However, what I learned over the next three weeks (and continue to learn now) was that students disliked the poetry they had been presented, not poetry in general. Students couldn't care less about a road diverging in a yellow wood, and they wanted to shove the red wheelbarrow up a white chicken's backside. But, once introduced to the poetry that isn't published in textbooks, but rather in the ears of a coffee shop, across the minds of a college auditorium, or on the grey walls surrounding a classroom, their minds were changed. Poetry was no longer a series of long faces, boring lectures, and meaningless notes; it was an experience. It was an opportunity. It was an autobiography written by the thoughts they had been taught to file into the nether regions of their teenage minds. Most importantly, poetry had finally become a reflection of themselves. The poems on this blog will attest to this. At times, you may find the poems misguided, poorly-conceived, technically unsound, juvenile, and possibly even offensive. Other times, you may find yourself astounded, excited, impressed, blown-away and picking your jaw up from the floor, as I have countless times over the past few years. They are raw. They are beautiful. They are thought-provoking. They are real. Most of all, they are just like the students themselves.
- Barkdoll