I really liked this poem....It's in our course, but oh! what a mindfuck...
Harlem - Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a rasin in the sun
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it sags
Like a heavy load
about to explode?
If A+B=3
And B+C=d
Then he said that he will love her
Promises were soaked in the shadow of a blur
But what if B+C=E?
Messed up limerick, wouldn't you say?
This would read:
If A plus B equals 3
And B plus C equals d
Then he said that he will love her
Promises were soaked in the shadow of a blur
But what if B plus C equaled E?
Now I want to write limericks, good fun. Thanks aaki.
TODD
A sweaty-toothed madman with a stare
that pounds my brain.
KEATING
Oh, that's excellent. Now, give him
action. Make him do something.
TODD
H-His hands reach out and choke me.
KEATING
That's it. Wonderful. Wonderful.
Keating removes his hands from Todd but Todd keeps his eyes
closed.
TODD
And, and all the time he's mumbling.
KEATING
What's he mumbling?
TODD
M-Mumbling, "Truth. Truth is like, like
a blanket that always leaves your feet
cold."
The students begin to laugh and Todd opens his eyes. Keating
quickly gestures for him to close them again.
KEATING
Forget them, forget them. Stay with the
blanket. Tell me about that blanket.
TODD
Y-Y-Y-You push it, stretch it, it'll
never be enough. You kick at it, beat
it, it'll never cover any of us. From
the moment we enter crying to the moment
we leave dying, it will just cover your
face as you wail and cry and scream.
Todd opens his eyes. The class is silent. Then they begin to clap
and cheer.
KEATING
(whispering to Todd)
Don't you forget this.
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-Robert Frost
Stubs
Memories that hide in the dirt,
hide from the booze in a broken bottle and burn the ends of an untouched cigarettes.
Memories that pierce the veins and rust my thoughts.
As time crawls over my tattooed skin and dissolves in a languid nosebleed,
I find myself frozen in the shadow of her grin.
An image that spins in my head.
One I can't forget or encase in the precise fumes of a cigarette A dream is stubbed before it burns...
(c) Hanedin 2007
