Lenea+Harris

"Poetry is the silent voice that is heard everywhere inside of us..." - Unknown

An Ode To Hate

Look me in the eyes if you can. But you can't. It's too dark. You're the burning in my stomach. lungs, and heart. That curse at the tip of my tongue. The throbbing of my head. The confusion. The tears that fell down my cheeks. Hate. You're the emotion that holds me back. But still, you protect me.

Praise Poem: Always Ariane

I said, I don't have much time to talk. She responded, ok me either. The tv blasted the Late Show. I sat down at the bottom of mom and dad's bed. Mom was snoring. Dad was snoring. But I wasn't because I was on the phone. So, what's up? I asked. She said, nothing. You? I sighed. I said, I don't have much time to talk. She responded, ok me either. I could hear the darkness on the other side of the phone. Espescially since it was more than dark where I was. I yawned. Why aren't you sleeping? I asked. I'm not tired she responded. I could just see her as my eyes insisted on closing and I resisted; Sitting up on her bed with her barbies trying to play even though she couldn't see. Well, I need to go to sleep. I said. I'm going to sleep soon, too. She responded. I said, I don't have much time to talk. She responded, ok me either. But still I was sitting there on the phone. I looked over at the clock, 12 :06. Why wasn't this girl sleep yet? I blinked my eyes and when it took minutes for me to open them back u I knew the conversation was over. Ok, I'm really getting off the phone now, I yawn. But there wasn't a reply. Hello? Hello? I hear a snore.

MY POEM Based off of Prisoner of Words Unsaid By Alicia Keys I'm a prisoner of words unsaid, Just lonely feelings locked away in my head. And this is my fault. I could've said something before. How I felt. What I meant. Anything. I had the chance. But I didn't. Fear, I guess. I'm a prisoner of words unsaid, Just lonely feelings locked away in my head. And this is my fault. So now I suffer. Getting angry. Getting mad. Feeling pain. It's too late to say anything now, because everything that was then ain't nothing now. So I sit on the couch in the life's house quietly. I'm a prisoner of words unsaid, Just loney feelings locked away in my head. And this is my fault. So quietly i deal with it.

A beautiful day outside, yes, it is. The children play like there's no tomorrow.
 * A Sonnet**:


 * What I think About my Poetry:**

I like my ode and my poem based off another poem better than my praise poem. My riffed poem is more interesting to me than anything. Both poems come exactly from the heart. I chose to base my poem off of Alicia Keys’ P.O.W because it was a poem I would have written if it wasn’t already out. The only thing is that her poem rhymed and the one I wrote didn’t.

Definitely
 * Mary Jo Bang Poetry:**

What is desire But the hard wire argument given To the mind's unstoppable mouth.

Inside the braincase, it's I Want that fills every blank. And then the hand Reaches for the pleasure

The plastic snake offers. Someone says, Yes, It will all be fine in some future soon. Definitely. I've conjured a body

In the chair before me. Be yourself, I tell it. Here memory makes you Unchangeable: that shirt, those summer pants.

That beautiful face. That tragic beautiful mind. That mind's ravenous mouth

That told you, This isn't poison At all but just what the machine needs. And then, The mouth closes on its hunger.

The heart stops.


 * Analysis:**

When I read this poem I didn't understand it all. But then, I broke it down stanza by stanza. The first stanza is simple it's saying that desire is the argument between the mind and the mouth that is won. The second stanza elaborates on Desire. It says that the only thing you're thinking about is yourself. And because you want it, is the answer to any possible question. The next stanza seems to be about fake people influencing other people. This poem is about the influence of desire. what it can do to you. If you really want something. Nomatter the risk, you'll make yourse;lf take it. That's what I got out of it.


 * Apology for Want**

I've worried far too much about the eye of the other: the shopkeeper and his lackey clerks who think I steal. I know I stand far too long, gazing

with wistful face at the muted tints of objects on shelves. How smart we all are getting. Soon we will understand everything: why our first breath, when our last.

Why a rat, even though shocked every time it eats, never stops knowing hunger. How hollow- boned birds and gilled fish estimate the size of a bounty, remember

where they stored food. There are few ways to free the body for desire, all in anarchy. Tomorrow, I'll go back to the shop- the story where it left off-

focus on those items that have bits of lavender hidden within: gimmaled broccoli tips overwrought asparagus. Survival lies in resistance, in the undersides of the leafed delicate.

Among animals, we're the aberration: sends us out dressed in ragged tulle, but won't tell where it last buried the acorn or bone.
 * want** appropriates us,


 * Analysis:**

To me this poem is a bit obvious but still very interesting. She herself is apologizing to every person, or animal that has been affacted because of someon'e want. She explains that want takes over everything else that drives us. A want is a hard thing to ignore.


 * Where Once**

On the street, looking up, there you were. A single helium balloon, imagine A flat-face mouse in Mylar.

You floated the way you always liked to float. Now you have been renamed and imperfectly faced. You’ve become the extreme form of nothingness

Sequestered, as at the end of a siege In a quarantined city hospitals are often reduced To ideas and empty rooms.

You’re still there for those who know where to look And what to watch for, as in dreams — where In spite of death color comes back,

Youth and a house and a red car and you And the paper on which you once drew a world As a pack of cards that sequentially revealed the next

To last thing seen as an animal falls. You stood on that ground and it was under your feet. And then you walked away.

This poem sounds like it's actually about a balloon. It doesn't sound like a mataphor for anything ese I could really imagine. Unless it's about the sun or something.
 * Analysis:**