Poetic Complaints

Yes, it's been an interesting week. I've been back in the poetry-writing saddle at work, trying to compose simple Bible-story poems for the children's curriculum I'm editing (www.generationsofgrace.com). On top of that, I've been reading Tennyson's Idylls of the King (at home, not at work!). The result is that I find myself once again very aware of meter...even thinking in it. Oy!

It's amazing what 2:30 does to the brain...or at least to my brain. In honor of that mind-numbing hour, two days ago I penned (um, "keyed"?) a little unrhymed iambic pentameter (a.k.a. "blank verse").

"2:30 p.m."

Disordered binders jut from crowded shelves
Above my desk, which hosts more of the same.
Each full of grammar and of spelling more
Disordered than the binders that they fill.
The bleak fluorescent lighting overhead
Gives off a dreary hum and dulls my brain.
I eye my coffee mug with some distaste--
It's cold--and, sighing, go back to my work,
Red pen in hand. It's days like this I think
A long vacation's really overdue.

And then yesterday I wrote this one, in honor (and I use that word loosely) of the 350-page dissertation that I'm editing as a side job right now. It's sort of taken over my life. Ugh.

"Hindsight"

If I'd known what it meant when I took on this huge dissertation,
If I'd looked in the future and seen my despair and frustration
And had known that one dollar per page would be scant compensation
For the toil and fatigue and "When will it be done?!" desperation
And had seen that my fate would be mental deterioration,
I can tell you this now: I'd at LEAST have expressed hesitation.
(But perhaps this is good for my ongoing sanctification?)

Sigh...if only the "real" poems, the ones for work, came out of my brain so extemporaneously. Oh, well. Maybe next week I'll compose some, um, positive, non-complaining lines.