English Class

Where we read ~*~LITERATURE~*~.

In this post I compiled the themes and modes of expression I have been diligently studying this semester for your enjoyment and edification. I feel good because I am reading and learning what the true masters of my art have to teach me, and my anthology informs me that this is the very best America has to offer me.


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“Ain't got cash on me,” Fitzgerald mumbled, the ends of two cigarettes lolling in his mouth as his hand twitched around the greasy pockets of his loose-hanging jeans. “Ain't got cash on me. But Simmons still has some. Ask Simmons.”
I remembered Simmons- a more unprintable young man I never met since running the last unprintable shipment of unprintable weed to the unprinting unprinted. I flipped the top of another can of beer and sat back in the bed of the pickup. Fitzgerald kept mumbling unprintably to himself. Didn't he remember Simmons was dead? Picked the unprintable unprintable out of a pool of his own blood that one morning back in June- tried to cut his own throat in the lavatory on a bus in Chicago, fainted, and drowned in the latrine. His hair'd been blue when they pulled him out- it was the last I remembered of him. Blue like the down on a bluebird's wings, and that struck me as unprintably funny- Simmons had never liked bluebirds, was always telling about one he shot down with a slingshot at his grandmother's house when he was five. He'd described the way it fluttered brokenly, and how that had made him laugh- I laughed at the memory of his light eyes with the pinpoint pupils, and the way he'd imitated that unprintable bird. Life is unprintable funny...


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Eleanor threw herself in a chair by the window. Her husband was oppressive. It made her really sad. He'd never done anything unkind to her, but she didn't like him, anyway. He oppressed her. It made her really sad. If only there was a way to stop him from oppressing her- it made her sad. It took all her freedom away. Day after day she would stay here at home doing nothing, and night after night he would come home from work and she would have to smile at him and then the whole thing began again. It was so oppressing she couldn't believe it. For who can understand what it truly is to be a woman, to think deep thoughts, deeper than those of our oppressors? Eleanor also felt repressed. Everything repressed her- the feminine chair by the bedside, with the cat sitting on it. Wearing underclothing repressed her, too. Taking a deep breath, she tore it off herself and cast it out the window, the white things going like flags of truce into the puddles in the street nine stories below. No flag of truce for Eleanor- no more would she negotiate with men. Eleanor felt a joy welling up inside her, a joy and a freedom heretofore unimaginable. No longer would she be oppressed. No longer would she feel sad. A moment she balanced on the windowsill, and the last thing she knew was true freedom...


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The passion of love welled up in me as I saw Mrs. Barron's girlish form slipping toward me through the trees. “Hush,” she said, her face almost frightened. “George didn't hear me leave. We have three hours.” “If only it were eternity,” I murmured. “Darling-” She swooned in my arms and I *****************>>>>*<<<<*********************************************************************~~~~~****************and then she ********^^^^^***********************!*********************************!!***************************!!!****************and I************************and she*********************and we*************!!!!!!111!!!!!oneone11!!*******************************my zipper slowly and sighed....


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“Because this is a new generation,” he said firmly. “Because I can't live my whole life out here.”
“But son-” said the toothless old man, groping a blind hand toward the handsome, tall, determined boy.
“No one can stop me. I'm going forward into the future.”
The old man rocked arthritically in his rocking chair. “Do not forget the old ways of the past. Do not forget your heritage and the ways of your fathers! It is the only way you will ever be happy.”
“I have cast off the chains of my youth. Now I an adult and I am free! I must go and do what I think is the right thing, because therein lies freedom. This is my rite of passage. That means I don't have to think anymore if I don't want to, and Youth is mine which basically means whatever I do is admirable.”
“Oh, son,” said the senile old man with a twitching of his watery blue eyes. “Do not go into the future, for it will harm you! Progress is bad!”
“I will shake the dust of this house from my shoes,” he said firmly, with a flame of knowledge in his eye....


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Her blue eyes looked at the man proudly. “You have no right to judge what I am doing. Would you prevent someone from following their conscience?”
“Lady, it ain't right.”
“What my conscience says is right.” She walked away. Her great-great-grandfather had been part Armenian, and now she was facing the overbearing racial prejudice of a cruel and uncaring nation.

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[POETRY]

I waited here, remembering the day I failed my Czech test
the day I left my last link to you lying
on the radiator in the abandoned apartment, with
cracks on the ceiling in the shape of a cyclops with three eyes
and a shattered beer bottle full of lost memories
Memories overcome me, as poignant as
the tang of a permanent marker left uncapped by an unsent package
in a room with marbles rolling over the floor,
a smell of yeast and bread and
Shakespeare's shoes
floating in a bowl of wonton soup pierced by a chopstick
outcrying against those who destroy the bamboo forests,
covered in rings of scallions like open green mouths protesting global warming
coming to a stop like the death of a dream,
poignantly
compellingly
like the woolly touch of yarn
and I know, with the assurance of thyme and peppermint growing in the moonlight
somewhere, nowhere, loneliness abounds
in an endlessly endless stream of unending sorrowfulness
like a trash can of wasted dreams
like my heart


~*~