Pneumonochrome

Here is the next poem from my assignments in Creative Writing

————

Stone tiles

Each square angle leads to yet another,
with the outline of the mortar rough and grey
setting one more tile among the others.
The not quite smoothness of the surface
is painted with a rainbow
of shifting browns and reds and greys.
No valleys to hide the dirt that feet bring in,
it sits on top to jam the wheels of the chair,
while the tiles form the foundation of the room.

–David Burrow
21 February 2006

This poem caused a bit of a stir in my creative writing class because no one could figure out what it was about. There’s a really good reason for that. The assignment was as follows:

Five Easy Pieces by Richard Jackson
Preparation: Remember a person you know well, or invent someone. Next, imagine a place where you find the person. Only write five sentences based on the following five steps:
1. Describe the person’s hands.
2. Describe something s/he is doing with the hands.
3. Use a metaphor to say something about some exotic place.
4. Mention what you would want to ask this person in the context of 2 and 3 above.
5. The person looks up or toward you, notices you there, give an answer that suggests s/he only gets part of what you said.

Well, you notice that the first time it mentions a place, it just says, “a place where you find…” and the second time, in step 3, it mentions “some exotic place.” Well, first off, I’m not an observer of people, I’m an observer of life and my own experience with it, so people poems are very difficult for me, and usually end up being quite superficial. Second, I had imagined a thoroughly nonexotic place for this person to be, so when I actually got to the poem, I was thrown for a loop. So I finally gave up and started writing lines that were just lines in and of themselves, without concern for what might connect them to each other. As a result, the poem is very disconnected, and there is no one unifying principle from line to line. This also means that there are no consistent images throughout he poem. In reality, it is like fragments of 2 or 3 different poems. The workshoppers worked so hard to try to make this poem work for me, that they came up with some really odd interpretations of what was going on, though all of their interpretations made sense if you looked at it from a perspective of trying to figure what was going on in the poem. With that story out of the way, the poem is below.

——————–

Nathan’s hands

Nathan’s hands are an expert surgeon’s scalpel, sterile and precise.
They divide the paths of life, exploring each intricate turn.
This matted hair, home to monsters, men and demons, holds out the sky and in the rain.
“How do you grasp a path diving beneath such a tightly woven shield?�?
“Doesn’t every path hide behind the best wall it can make?�?

–David Burrow
10 February 2006

Green

Originally uploaded by yellowd79.

So, this morning I dressed in the dark when I was half asleep. As you can see from this picture I snapped with my phone, I should never, ever do this. I ended up in green khaki’s with a green button down. *sigh* That’s what I get for being up at 4am.

This article discusses some research that has produced a Potential Cure for HIV. Now, granted, this is far from being good, solid, established science, and BYU has a history of producing the unreproduceable (can we say, “Cold Fusion?”), but still. This is a reason to hope and celebrate. If this drug really does prove to be effective at finding and destroying HIV, then we’ve made a great leap in medicine.

The next consideration that really needs to be made, after independent verification and FDA approval, is how do we distribute such a drug to the populations that need it most. There’s a huge HIV+ population in Africa, for example, and most of them can’t afford to go to where a hospital is, let alone be seen and treated by a doctor.

Therein lies the rub to a lot of medicine. We have the means to manage so many diseases, in fact, we could possibly nearly eliminate a few, if we only had the ability to treat the highly susceptible populations. Treatments that cure disease will lower prevalence, and subsequently transmission rates. Decreasing transmission rates coupled with increasing proficiency in combatting the disease lead to greater public health, greater quality of life, and all around better medicine. It truly would be an amazing thing to see this sort of HIV drug made available to everyone.

I know, keep dreaming… but maybe, just maybe, if we all do what we can to contribute to aiding disadvantaged populations, we can begin to make a difference. And that everyone can start with me, or with you, or anyone else. I’ll never forget the time I spent in Ethiopia this last summer. It has changed the way I think about every aspect of my life.

Here’s the third installment of poetry from my creative writing class.

—–

Before the storm

The wind whirs through the needled bush,
plain on the face of the cliff,
and the blackberries fall,
tumbling around that button nose,
splashing, to paint
the stones below in the sweetness of a mother’s laughing tears
as the hand of her ethereal
lover caresses her forlorn cheeks.
Cheeks that had lost hope for that gentle,
intangible touch.