Poetry Project, Day 26

Today was a veritable mind-numbing day. Over my lunch hour, I played 5 games of chess. Yes, in an hour. Ummm..yes, I was playing more than one game at a time, and yes...I won them all. But it pretty much shot my mind. Later, a student asked me for some help with a paper, and all I have to say is: "Who is the stupid jerk who thought that Kerouac's "On the Road" was an appropriate piece of lit to be studying in a Lit 102 class?? I really want to hurt this person. I cannot fathom how you would ask an 18 yr old college freshman to understand and then write about a coming-of-age-identity-searching-travel-writing piece. Really? I mean, what does an 18 yr old know about that stuff? Not to say that most 18-yr olds aren't defining themselves in this day and age - so OK, there's ONE argument for it - but unless you think of literature pretty abstractly (and most people don't, particularly if it's something they HAVE to read) then it's next to impossible. A 200-level class....meh, if it's about modern American lit, ok. But the 100-level classes?? Please, it's a survey class, populated by people who are taking the class only because it's a requirement. I don't deny it's a great piece of lit, and important, but this idea clearly wasn't thought through.

Enough ranting about academic crap that I can't change. Let's have some poetry!!!


The Old Man

There is an old man I know,
who sits on his front porch, smoking his pipe.
I am afraid of him.
Smoke curling up around him like stray hair,
winding up and up, tendrils of smelly tobacco
staining the whitewashed ceiling of his porch.
He looks, but does not speak.
I think he knows something,
but he will not say.
He just looks at me with a sort of silly grin,
as if to say, "You'll know one day,"
And I run away back down the street,
to the safety of my own yard, my own porch, my house
my mother and father, my secret hiding-place,
Where the the Old Man doesn't know how to find me.

Thanks for reading!

The Fat Kid