Forgiveness from the Hateful

This poem examines an observation that I've made, people who forgive those that they resent, often have been hateful to the point of self-destruction. I use a very simple metaphor in this poem, likening hatred to fire. While cliche, fire is an incredibly accurate and effective model in this context. When it inevitably burns out, what was there prior is forgotten, or built upon. A second metaphor is the connection to Chicago. After the fire, the city totally changed its building codes. It was a city built upon destruction, not by replacing things, but by improving them. This is how I see forgiveness, it comes after someone has suffered at the hand of their own resentments.

Procrastination

This poem follows my cycle of procrastination in a chronology of my mental state. The first stanza describes the primary cause of my procrastination, the guilty desire to sit on my ass and do nothing. There is no metaphor in the first stanza, all words are literal in order to set the context for more flowery language. The second stanza includes metaphor, I imagine a scene in which I'm covered by papers falling upon me, “Papers fall upon me;Electronic signatures of my defect; I look to the world of green and yellow”. As I suffocate I look to the green and yellow google classroom icon, realizing my failure.

The whole poem is written to elicit the feeling of lostness that procrastination creates, it separates two drives which in other areas would coincide, hedonism and productivity. The final stanza focuses on these feelings. It describes the subject as “Uneasy in the effort” and therefore unable to push himself to complete the task. Instead he pulls himself by his hamstrings — a stretch I do quite often — and motivates himself to start working. The final line of the poem refers to the cyclical nature of this chronology, it happens every day, fulfilling itself and lending to a hard to break habit.

Twelve Steps Downstairs

This poem follows my cycle of procrastination in a chronology of my mental state. The first stanza describes the primary cause of my procrastination, the guilty desire to sit on my ass and do nothing. There is no metaphor in the first stanza, all words are literal in order to set the context for more flowery language. The second stanza includes metaphor, I imagine a scene in which I'm covered by papers falling upon me, “Papers fall upon me; Electronic signatures of my defect; I look to the world of green and yellow”. As I suffocate I look to the green and yellow google classroom icon, realizing my failure.

The whole poem is written to elicit the feeling of lostness that procrastination creates, it separates two drives which in other areas would coincide, hedonism and productivity. The final stanza focuses on these feelings. It describes the subject as “Uneasy in the effort” and therefore unable to push himself to complete the task. Instead he pulls himself by his hamstrings — a stretch I do quite often — and motivates himself to start working. The final line of the poem refers to the cyclical nature of this chronology, it happens every day, fulfilling itself and lending to a hard to break habit.