Thorned King
Through entangled crowned hairs and blazing light
Through a thousand hells
He led her to her endless plight,
or so the story tells.
A flattered public display he preferred
Over Cordelia’s ‘nothing’ so pure
Abandoning the truth that she lent
To fire, it he sent.
But for a demand speech of reassurance, the price is
great,
Soon they’d prick and thorn his life to darken his
days
For loving the unloving delivers an unfortunate state
And after the battle, in the ground they lay
remembering nothing…
Life, for him, the price of momentary fame,
Brought fractured hearts to what was just a
double-talk game
Eventually, he recalled what he forgot
But still more evil came, more pain wrought.
All the good he once sought,
All his work came to not.
At the end, he looked at her lips, asking to deliver
something so vibrant
Never recalling that she said to “Love, and be
silent.”
Author’s
Note: I attempted to transform particular plays and scenes into poems. The
theme for this poem is that love makes no speaking sound. This poem serves to
encapsulate the story of King Lear, emphasizing the consequences of his love
test. For some of my poems, I included a few images in order to help with this mental visualization.
------
Unmade
Similar to the smell of water,
She is nature rather than art
And is weathered silent on this frozen ground
but still dazzles you so.
Something born, made, recreated?
As something that arrived too late for words
It moves you slowly toward the gray, cloudy footage
that memory preserves
Echoing now as a confusing imitation
Within this stone
There is something brilliant suffused inside
The gaze is still
But there is no place she does not see you.
Like a fantasy that plays upon our sight
Seducing you at every moment
Tricking your focused eye
A work trapped in the almost,
Looking for movement and for words
If squeezed hard enough,
she will emerge like a pit from a dried up plum
still audible to you.
A burst, a shatter
A cracking of that outer crust of rock
Breaking the heavy fossil layers that borders
A deeper heartbeat repeating, move, move
Following the music of her conductor,
Senses now replacing the empty air
Words fluent on her lips.
Author’s
Note: In this poem I attempt to re-imagine the scene of Hermione’s statue (how
the statue serves to suspend our disbelief), while at the same time positioning
her character as it relates to her husband, King Leontes. The statue serves to
puzzle us, and I try to capture this unsure/ambiguous moment from both the
character’s perspective (Leontes) and the audience’s (Is she moving or not? Has
she been living this whole time or restored/resurrected? How is this statue
tricking our senses?). The poem also focuses
on how language (language as it relates to knowledge and being “real” or human)
or oral exchange is an important theme in the play. Moreover, in this poem, I
attempt to recreate the scene of when she’s attempting to come back to life. At
the end of the poem, she is a “nature’s art” realized.
-----
The Storyteller
On a wintery night outside of time,
Sitting like two innocent lovers
Upstairs, the boy begins a paper-filled sad tale
Next to the rain-stained window
He tenderly steals his mother’s warmth
encircling them are envious crickets
wishing to hear about the man dwelling in a churchyard,
wanting to be frightened by fantastical sprites.
On his mother’s lap he intently whispers to her
all of the best secrets to a winter’s tale
but the fantasy of whispering will overwhelm
a suspicious husband, a jealous king
Giving in to the mind's flat-noted chorus and
with a center long iced over
He rips them like a paper in two
The boy did not complete the season,
his story of ripe bitter melons and green
caterpillars
resting underneath the leaves
of pearl pumping seas
of a love discovered
was a story untold, unsatisfied.
But perhaps it’s an unscheduled tale that breathes
in the absence of words,
is restored, surviving in the nameless space that is
our imagination
The fresh unknown stopping to let us board
Inviting us to toss whatever we have in our minds' pockets
Just a patch of frozen water,
waiting to melt.
Will the story be to find what is missing?
Author’s
Note: In this poem, I attempt to create the scene of Mamillius and his mother
in The Winter’s Tale. In short, I
attempt to show how the act of whispering, in addition to the visual or
theatrical display of heartful bodies touching, may upset (or trigger) a
jealous husband. Furthermore, the main point of this poem is to think back to
how Shakespeare uses absence or offstage events. Ultimately, what this poem is
saying (even though I shouldn’t say it myself as it undermines my poem’s point)
is that it’s better to let the audience imagine the story themselves---to fill
in the blanks all on their own (a story found). I added details to the story by including
caterpillars, bitter melons, and so forth, to hint at how my mind would
re-imagine Mamillius’ story. Overall, I also hope that readers’ begin asking
themselves, “Is what’s sad about Mamillius’ story lies in the fact that he
never got to finish it?”
