Project 3
Holding On
The past must fade away, yet it stays with us all.
The petals of life continue to fall.
The bank of time is full,
But the robber relentlessly steals.
Initially full, vaulted away, the bank provides
Happiness, purity, innocence, with lives fully bloomed.
All of which sprung back to me with
A casual call to watch a movie.
It was yet to start but
As the nostalgic music played,
Tears gushed down my face.
My mother called out to me
“What’s wrong Beta?”
“How was I supposed to tell her that
My childhood was wilting before my eyes.”
As the Music sounded, flashbacks
Of my full bank permeated my mind.
The uncanny burn from the metal slide.
The muddy shoes from hopping in puddles.
The grass stained jeans after a day of play.
The unique scars covering knees.
The splintered hands after topping the baobab tree.
The fresh scent of a new pack of crayons
The dandelion petals flowing with the wind.
As the bank continues to deplete.
The wildebeest of time trample adolescence,
as the thief gets rich.
We must hold on to the past,
As the future is volatile.
The uncertainty of tomorrow must be
Coddled by the assurance of yesterday as funds
Dwindle
Until
The
Bank
Is
Left
BROKE.
A call for help
He idles alone in his messy apartment
Forlorn, lost, hazed
He purchases the bouquet of flowers every Friday
Stuck alone in his sorrow
He hands me his crumpled 20 dollar bill
An unshaven, tired, depressed face
Tells me to keep the change
And the cycle continues every week
I come back to the apartment one day
He stops purchasing the flowers
I enter his apartment
To find him lying lifeless
A forgotten friend
I try to speak up and they shut me down
My voice is never heard
Even though I always hang out with them
I still feel all alone
They walk off while I tie my shoes
I’m the one walking on the grass
When the narrow sidewalk comes
They laugh and ridicule as they make fun of me
I’m always the butt of the joke
My presence is never noticed
I’m invisible to them
My project demonstrates a huge variety of skills that I learned and improved upon over the duration of this course during our second term. For instance, through our readings and discussions of POV and voice, I aimed to make poems that were from the POV/Voice of different narrators that I ordinarily would not get the representation that they deserve. For the first poem, I decided to write from my own voice, however, and talk about the concept of time, using a personal anecdote inside of the story. Drawing inspiration from our countless readings during the duration of this term. I used many similes and allusions to movies like lion king when I refer to the wildebeest of time, working in tandem with the general theme of the poem about time passing us by idly, with the Lion King allusions serving as distant memories of a lost, unappreciated childhood. In the second poem, I used a variety of skills as well, utilizing a very unique POV. I wrote a very bleak poem about a man who recently lost his wife and was forlorn, but from the perspective of a delivery man who dropped off the flowers that the husband would still buy for his deceased wife. In this poem, I try to get into the mind of an observant delivery man, picking up on the warning signs coming from this very broken man. The purchase of the flowers while he always seemed alone in his apartment, his facial expressions and mannerism all lead the delivery man to worry for the man when he skips his usual order, to end up realizing that his worst fears had come true. In the third poem, I still write from a sad point of view, but it ends up being much less depressing than the second poem I wrote. This time, I use POV to try and convey the emotions and experiences of an unappreciated, forgotten friend that ends up always being overshadowed, and feels invisible. Unlike the first two poems, this poem is less like a story, which demonstrates my growth as a writer as I strayed away from my norm of writing. Instead of reading like a normal story, this poem aims to convey the feelings and sentiments that a forgotten friend experiences, and aims to utilize imagery and POV. Some challenges I experienced when making these poems was adequately putting myself in the shoes of characters that were not me, and trying to write from their POVs. To address this issue, I had to change my entire mindset, and essentially act as if I was the character I was narrating from, acting from their demographic and trying to think about how they would react to situations and interpret events. I’ve learned about not writing a story, simply expressing feelings through poems, incorporating personal anecdotes in poems, utilizing dialogue, and also using different POV and voices that are often not represented in poems.
