By Thomas Page
I am student teaching a senior level class in Washington, DC. They have to write some poems on these prompts. I decided to try all 30 of them. However, I will not say what the prompt was but what its number was.
Prompt #28
The sciences, the onus of humanity, tries to parse all into Humean parts
Like destroying a Waterford into jagged micro-shards
That, in theory, explain the universe all the way to Neptune
And the gassy starts pilfering the elements into a crunching freeze,
Like the leftover lemon-pepper tenderloin in the freezer forgotten
Needing one of Doc Frankenstein’s devilish amperes to revitalize
Into something that could be sold as primetime fare.
The arts, the quartz in humanity’s radio, tries to parse all into Kantian parts
Like insisting that the monorail is faster than driving yourself
Building basilicas in the mind of fantastic stories of dragons and queens
Looking to paint the ceiling in the condensation found in the rocks
From the quarry lost in time and shaped in geometric forms
Dwelling in the gravity’s final act in holding it all in
For the sake of itself in gregarious fashion.
I grated from the school of arts and sciences yet
I tend to separate the two like a joey and its kangaroo
Looking for something that is chaotically uniform
Trying to be and not be the ziggurat in the ancient square
When the philosophers rose from the sea for the rest of time
Until, for some reason, the era of the rotary phone
Making the whole endeavor seem frivolous.
