Random Freewrite 2: Week of 4/17/11

Hiroshima

Draft 4 

The crane calls me home. Hiroshima,

with checkered mats of loose-leaf green,

fed by snow and rain. Spring yields

and summer rains pelt my newborn rice into coin.

Aged farmers in pairs, in their married cadence

bent through years into jackknifed broken form,

picking rice to turn to coin.

They call me home. Hiroshima,

pink petal silks in spring cobweb

all the patchwork market ways.

Folding willow trees line the streets

and sway like silk creased gowns.

Red bobbins and violet combs,

for black-haired bonnets in elegant form,

dress daughters in wedding folds.

August blends in with paper twists

folded up in rainbow stuttered steps.

Paper cranes recalling bombs.

—They said it was the rain.

They said it was the seeping wind.—

Outside the park of hope and peace,

where dignitaries and somber tourists drift,

old buildings and their hollowed vertebrae

stands upward bare and breaks the catacomb of the sky,

like tree limbs sketch-marking the winter grays.

Color only comes in paper, the twists of crane

line building bones, one thousand strong in rainbow squares.

Paper prayers for shadows burrowed in cement walls,

where the shapes of heads and shoulders linger,

flash-burnt like human pottery.

If I could but burrow out from casket walls

sons and daughters buried too short, too young,

or too long, in bleeding skins and ash-burnt lungs.

August lingers every year,

at once too anonymous and too precise.

These days only end in breathing,

—once in, now out, again and out—

till night folds in and ribs unclench.

—I found it was the rain.

I found it was the culling wind.—

The crane calls me home from this.

With ruffled mask of grey-white rust

she feeds me in the winter rain

and carpets of snow unfolding across my vertebrae

to seal asleep until I begin again. Spring yields

and summer rains pelting newborn rice into coin.

The broken cadence of my farmers, aged in twos,

turning green rice carpets into coin.

I am as was, will be.

Of wet carton carpet greens,

pink cobweb grace and folding trees.

I lie awake

with my paper rainbow folded wings.

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 4/17/11

Antoine Dodson Doodles in Art Class
Revision #4


My portrait mugs the internet.
An overgrown meme, a bias breeder.
I’m out of bounds, they say, irregular to common taste.
Hollywood’s old Sissy back in prime time luminosity.
Sexless and two-toned like a Top Model menagerie
cut loose for time, spectacle and boneless design.
A face in bent motif, backdraft hair, intrepid teeth,
this body freefalling from a crack binge high.
Ungainly gesticulations maim my daddy,
like he’s in sync with me, too flap, too slack.
They don’t know he don’t know me
for this very portrait of me: gender bent,
this dick in crayon-wobbled lines.
Every day I happen again.
Woman-ish. Again. “Effeminate.”
My daddy’s name for me, not mine.
Paint me a face, Rembrandt. Interpret my cacophony.

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 3/21/11

Antoine Dodson Doodles in Art Class

Revision 3

(Now trying something completely different. Well, sort of.)

My portrait mugs the internet.

An overgrown meme, a bias breeder.

They say I’m out of bounds,

unaccountable to common cadence.

--Yeah, me.--

Effeminate, I’m called. Hollywood’s old Sissy

back in prime time luminosity. Woman-ish.

--That’s right, boy.--

Sexless and two-toned like a Top Model menagerie

cut loose for time, spectacle and boneless design.

--Get this, uh huh.--

A face in bent motif, backdraft hair, intrepid teeth,

my body freefalling from a crack binge high.

--They say--

I’m an ungainly gesticulation.

Every movement maims momma’s baby daddy,

like he’s with me too flap, too slack,

self-portrait of dick, gender bent, in crayon-wobbled lines.

--Girl, please.--

Effeminate is not my name for me.

Paint me a face, Rembrandt. Interpret my cacophony.

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 2/14/11

Hiroshima

The crane calls me home. Hiroshima,

with my checkered mats of loose-leaf green,

I feed her in the snow and rain. Spring yields

and summer rains pelt my newborn rice into coin.

Aged farmers in pairs, in their married cadence

bent through years into jackknifed broken form,

turning newborn rice into coin.

They call me home. Hiroshima,

my pink petal silks in spring cobweb

all the patchwork market ways.

Folding willow trees line my streets

and sway like silk creased gowns.

Red bobbins and violet combs,

for black-haired bonnets in elegant form,

dress my daughters in wedding folds.

They blend into the August paper twists

folded up in rainbow stuttered steps.

—They said it was the rain.

They said it was the seeping wind.—

Once a year, remembrance of the bomb.

In good faith, West pardons her sons,

and mine are left blunt-edged, quiet.

My vertebrae stands upward bare

and breaks the blue-sealed sky catacomb,

like tree limbs sketch-mark the winter gray.

Sketch marks across rainbow-frosted grays,

paper twists of crane lining building bones.

Shadows burrowed in my yellowed ribs,

these cement shadow stairs, death-frosted

stairs famous to West for gawker's guilt.

I burrow in today, burrow out the casket wall

to sons and daughters buried too short, too young

under the atomic mushroom wing.

The remembrance of their ash lingers here, bare

through yellowed casket ribs and rainbow twists,

at once too anonymous and too precise.

The day only ends in breathing,

—once in, now out, again and out—

till night folds in and ribs unclench.

—I found it was the rain.

I found it was the culling wind.—

The crane calls me home from this.

With ruffled mask of grey-white rust

she feeds me in the rain, the winter rain

and carpets of snow unfolding across my vertebrae

to seal asleep until I begin again. Spring yields

and summer rains pelting newborn rice into coin.

The broken cadence of my farmers, aged in twos,

turning green rice carpets into coin.

I am as was, will be.

Of wet carton carpet greens,

pink cobweb grace and folding trees.

I lie awake

with my paper rainbow folded wings.

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 2/14/11

Epitaph for a Possum

Here lies a myopic mom

--unkindly evolved--

Hrududowned and done

Pancaked to memory

By the common barrage

Of shift-made squeals

And tactless gears.

Epitaph for a Flea

Here lies a Malingerer.

Hand-plucked ganglion

Pinched through.

Born without autonomy

And slain for it, too.

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 2/7/11

The laundry thumps. Almost done.

I remember this, the litany of decontamination.

My voice never raised but your heart would faint.

I remember our most romantic evenings

spent in sterile hospital cells of your vacillating puberty.

The buzzer’ll ring soon. Not soon enough.

Cleaning feels maternal somehow,

cold-pressed onto me like prehistoric fossils of mistake.

Some men hug not to hold but to burrow into muscle

like ticks bloated on strength.

They say things change to remain the same.

I’ve got towels to fold yet, and a bed to make.

When the laundry's done, I'll be good to go,

as well rid of you as of static hell clingwrap sheets.

(The first line was all I got done in the classroom prompt. Then I spoke with Professor Edwards after and took her fantastic line "prehistoric fossil of mistake" and tried to wrap my feelings about this breakup into something that felt a part of outdated gender roles to me. He based his proposal on the fact that I cleaned his house for him once, from top to bottom. So that's where this came from. There's probably more I could go into; I need to work on expanding and then stripping down.)

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 1/31/11

This was prompted by the line in the freewrite we read last week: “only trolleys promised ghouls.” I can’t seem to get it to express exactly what I was seeing in my head when I read that line, so I keep going back to it and working at it. The freewrite exercise last week might help me if I just set aside what I’ve written here and try it from a fresh perspective. I might try that at some point in the future and give this one another go.

Silent run the ghouls,

somewhat discombobulatedly.

They discard the wilting peel

of twice-stretched earth,

and sift through firefly sieves

butter-melting soft,

to brush the common frame

and catch the patterned hull

of the lacquered scuffle box.

Garbled growling engine on,

coaxed by papers weighing coin.

Sunlight without scorn flicks on

if rather disjointedly.

Forward, then. They jostle on,

and stretch and stretch

resplendently

from gangling gnarls of fading whine

to lucid joyous shifts of wail.

Now through winding coffin lanes

where air weavers rush to and fro

and perchance too late to slow

making circus eyes and circus mouth

to see the ghouls up close.

Moon makes more soup than sun;

wails more kin than whine.

Silent run the ghouls,

surreptitiously.

Now in ones, then twos,

and so forth, on and on,

one might say duplicitously,

for want of company.

Random Freewrite 2, Week of 1/24/11

Game

some frenzied meat

caterwauls

its sweetness to its own

on crusted wind

and battered brawn

while judiciously

in placid nips

a stork is gorging

on simmered wits

and frozen stone

Random Freewrite 1, Week of 1/24/11: draft

Wasting

The trees pour down.

The leaves bleed out.

Scrap paper.

I wish I was the way I were.