post-English 302

I have been outed. My old-school, New England liberal writing professor asked for a showing of hands on who, in the class, was homeschooled, after reading an article on the local phenomenon. There are two of us, apparently, and we represent both ends of the spectrum: the tidy, early, verbose Latin scholar and the perpetually almost-late free-verse partier. Well, we aren't normal. On Thursday, we're assigned a poem on death. I want to make it something beautiful and terrible, something Sylvia Plath.

But I was also surprised in class - when he asked us two freaks if our parents didn't "believe" in evolution, like people don't believe in gravity - "Is the earth flat?" - half the other students started talking about how most schools teach it as a theory, and with other theories. He laughed at us, but the harassment was over - he didn't even defend the exaggerations, or claim a studied cultural disconnect, as he does when we have to explain references to Mario 64 in our work. I do wish I'd taken debate, though, sometimes...

Yes, I am skipping theatre class; I don't want to be present for today's assignment. I can take their language and innuendo; it only further cements everything I believe about the world. I bury my nose in the book, write excellent papers, and exult quietly when I find a fellow dissenter. But I will not stand in the middle of a black box stage and sing their songs, play their hand-organ, dance like a chained bear.

It is a day for Earl Grey tea, with the sky all fog and mold. The colors of the world are wet coals now, an infusion of cynicism and rusted loveliness. I shake an extra packet of sugar into my cold black bergamot and leave to run paperwork upstairs to the dean's office.

tread softly...

Good evening, dear world...

I would have you know that I am procrastinating. I'm between health papers; I've been researching online resources for smoking prevention, and now I need to write a page on our guest lecturer from last week, but I very much want a rambling break. This particular guest speaker was hilarious, new to the department, very self-serious and aggressive with the apathetic classroom, almost a 25-year-old Carol Burnett in her mannerisms. It was wonderful, but I'm supposed to write something serious on it.

But instead I am not. I'm going to type out for you one of my poems, the third out of four submitted and my personal favorite. The first two I wrote were rather ambiguous, pretty but muddy, and the fourth one was an epic in length - two full pages of size eight font - and I threshed out the concept and wrote the first half while I was angry, but had to write the second half after I'd run the anger out, so it didn't turn out too coherently. But this one is nice, and I didn't get any reviews of "huh?" from my class. Tell me what you think!

By the way, the title is Latin. It means either authority or domain; both fit, so I used it. Yes, I was fishing vaguely when I came up with it.



Regnum

I have never danced.
Mothers ask me after I have coached
Their daughters' milky butterfly feet
Into a pair of pointe shoes,
Silvery-pink platforms, twins of a diamond rack,
Where one graceless step cracks an ankle.
Or little girls smile up at me stammeringly,
Hoping their new baby-brassy taps
Have been given to them by a prima donna,
A fairy godmother.
No, I stumble, I do waltz on the weekends,
But I spent my high school nights in Latin textbooks.
They gather themselves up from the bench,
Snatch the shoebox from my hands.
One smooths a "dance is life" shirt over her
Beautiful ribs. Smiles down at me.
I have never danced.

I've missed writing here...I may come back. I do not write as I used to, and the practice would be good for me.
I have been writing poetry lately, heaps of it, after being set rolling by my creative writing class, so bits of that may end up here. We'll see if I can make any of it ambiguous enough for internet publication.

...reading over my posts from nearly a year ago...that running away sounds lovely. I am so bewildered nowadays, what with the sifting out of the two things which, I admit to my shame, I trusted most.

But I cannot run to where I ended up last time. You have infiltrated and consumed everything, haven't you?

If anyone reads this, please do leave me a comment. I'd like to know just who is still around, who I am writing to.