A Poem About Andre Codrescu - Rough Draft

I don't know how happy I am with this, but I got to play around with the formatting and stuff, so that was fun.

I hope it shows up:

Marketing Andre to Conservative America

conservative
america loves the “badguy” thing
so when you said he fled his home country
in 1965 really hit that he left the communist
regime for US; because we make movies about that
the good guy
puts a bullet
in the bad guy
bashed the poor sap’s head off
and the auplause
rains down
and spaltters
all around the theatre
none of them care who’s dead or where
Sibiu is.

forget the fact that when he arrived he howled
with some “hippies” in East Villiage and beat
his drum with a steady pace
because they’re redwhiteandblue
and those colors don’t run
as long as there’s a war
and they ain’t the one’s
dying.
never let them hear he was born
a jew. america doesn’t understand that six sided
star and say they can’t eat pork
unless a rabbi
kills it right.

and say he wrote books,
more books that you could read
in one life
even though his true love
was a haunting
courpse
and other authors came and wrote
on her flesh and even with all the sexual
sounds coming
together pieces at a time
america still wouldn’t be able to get it
up.

I think I believe in God- Rough Draft

It’s been two years since we lay bare
skinned and breathless beneath broken-in sheets, predominantly
pale limbs tangled like treetop canopies and we spoke
in soft syllables and pressing skin against skin, let the slowly growing Sunday
morning sunlight watch us through the window.
Half-clothed and waxing Philosophic
I said prayers to you
I no longer mean.

That’s the way romance works, I think
softly to myself as the quiet eyed girl
at the counter of the local Barnes & Noble rings
up my book:
a new bible, words of Christ
in red. She doesn’t say a word.
I’ve spent so long hiding
from God like bad history
between friends: if I ignore it long enough
it may go away, and too long
being afraid to believe anything
greater than me might exist but now I know
there are many things greater than me.

And all these thoughts congeal in the cool night
air because it’s Saturday and my sheets
are usually empty and my hands smell
like smoke and my head
is still cloudy and thick, and in the back of my head
I never feel your air breath out: I’m worried
I’m only seeing God to replace you.

because a long time ago in the still
and fuzzy times of childhood, where each truth told
makes a little fold and sets a heavy crease inside your brain
a man with a black suit and blue tie
asserted so I would never forget
where exactly we go when we die

when God doesn’t
love you.




This is the first poem and (unfortunately) first assignment of the new year. Still a rough draft.

I never met a girl I didn't meet

Wow, what a headache in formatting issues! I'll post the revisions I did from last semester here. I'm not really sure how pleased I am with them, so I'll have to look them over, but anyway.