PERMISSIONS: To view the blog, post on it, and comment on posts, you must be invited. I will send you an email invitation to join the blog, and then you must follow the instructions to join up and begin posting. You can't join the blog without first creating a Google account.

POSTING: Post your poems by clicking "New Post" at the top right of the page. Paste your poem into the window.

LABELING: Then label the post with the assignment name (i.e., "confessional poem," "sonnet," etc.), your name (i.e., "Tony Barnstone," etc.), and the week (i.e., "week one," "week two," but not "week 1"--spell out your numbers). If you post a poem in week two that is due in week three, label it "week three." When you begin to type in a label, the program will fill it in for you, so your post will be labeled with the rest of the poems in the same category.

COMMENTING: Afterwards, you can "comment" on the posts of your classmates. Post "group one" and "group two" one-page critical responses as "comments" on the posted poems, but also print out copies for me and for the poet and give them to us in class.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Casualties

A perfect ripple of flesh in the night that shakes off insecurity.
Lip, enamel and breath encircle a tongue and speak of perfect victims.

Perfect mornings blanched by tired light and hidden under satin sheets -
There is no victim in taking in a breath of hair, of roses and smoke.

You are perfect in your profession, a doctor in an immaculate coat -
To you there are no victims, only bad choices and equality and balance.

Perfect lies spoken into electric air that carries little deceits -
Little deceits for little victim, me, and aching pity for you in the years to come.

Little, secret, perfect beggings spoken at night for aid, for support of flesh and bone -
Subtle denial and malicious ignorance, noninvolvement, creates more victims.

Perfect in their victimitude, humans sweat under the weight of secret guilts.
But if victimless crimes are Alex's specialty, why does he sweat so?


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