[New-Poetry] another inaugural poem

[Jason Quackenbush]

I wrote one too:

Poem About a New President
for Sasha and Malia Obama

How many colors might be found within
where in yr new digs things aren't so monochrome
as it gets on the outside and now
not so much the things as they might have been.

I watched you on TV when I was there sort of
early still on the west coast in my work day
and tho things could still be described as tense
the silver of it all can be cleary seen.

those brass deals sound better like bell like
stuff sometimes is better brass there's a reason
we don't sing out the voices of those gilded
ornaments hanged pretty but not so crystalline.

harder metal maybe, but needed here is the clear
sound that rings a bit like where does papa obama
get that accent from in hawaii i wonder and well
so we'll see later today whether it matters so much.

I'm having some chicken for lunch I think, maybe
a diet pepsi and a cigarette. I'm wearing sneakers
and working from home. We'll see where my coming
time of service takes me. We'll see which way it all went.

On Jan 20, 2009, at 10:01 AM, Philip Metres wrote:

> "Letter to Barack Obama (Solstice, 2008)" by Philip Metres  
> (pmetres at jcu.edu)
>
>
> Yes, you’ll need to stay alive
> to the possibilities
> of disappointing us, who believe
> you’d change everything
>
> & yesterday. To dodge bullets,
> those ballots of the disaffected
> & the entrenched,
> their undisclosed locations
>
> in our collective mind. To stare
> whole buildings back
> from rubble of foreclosure
> & condemnation, stand watch
>
> over bridges to nowhere
> we’ve never known, & always
> someone’s somewhere. To end stop
> /loss & unlawful
>
> combatants, extraordinary
> renditions & waterboarding,
> the cool abstractions that make
> torture into Pet Sounds.
>
> You’ll need to pierce the wall
> of sound that power makes,
> or tent yourself in your living
> room & slowly go mad. Stay long
>
> enough that we grow
> used to you, scion of the globe,
> become mundane as a dollar,
> flawed, iconic, yet alive.
>
> So when you’re called to kill
> in our name, like a lover
> who’s slept with another,
> we’ll never let you live
>
> it down, though we will
> never leave. Nor forgive.
>
> Philip Metres
> Associate Professor
> Department of English
> John Carroll University
> 20700 N. Park Blvd
> University Heights, OH 44118
> phone: (216) 397-4528 (work)
> fax: (216) 397-1723
> http://www.philipmetres.com
> http://www.behindthelinespoetry.blogspot.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry

Jason Quackenbush
jfq at myuw.net