Mr. Truant busts out a poetry thread
Tricks wit Mirrors -- Margaret Atwood
i
It's no coincidence
dis be a used
furniture warehouse.
I enter wit you
n' become a mirror.
Mirrors
is tha slick luddrs,
that's it, carry mah crazy ass up tha stairs
by tha edges, don't drop me,
dat would be back luck,
throw mah crazy ass on tha bed
reflectin side up,
fall tha fuck into me,
it aint nuthin but ghon be yo' own
grill you hit, firm n' glassy,
yo' own eyes you find you
is up against closed closed
ii
There is mo' ta a mirror
than you lookin at
yo' full-length body
flawless but reversed,
there is mo' than dis dead blue
oblong eye turned outwardz ta yo thugged-out ass.
Think bout tha frame.
Da frame is carved, it aint nuthin but blingin,
it exists, it do not reflect you,
it do not recede n' recede, it has limits
n' reflectionz of itz own.
There's a nail up in tha back
ta hang it with; there is nuff muthafuckin nails,
be thinkin bout tha nails,
pay attention ta tha nail
marks up in tha wood,
they is blingin too.
iii
Don't assume it aint nuthin but passive
and easy as fuck , dis clarity
wit which I give you yo ass.
Consider what tha fuck restraint it
takes: breath withheld, no anger
and joy disturbin tha surface
of tha ice.
Yo ass is suspended up in me
dope n' frozen, I
preserve you, up in mah crazy ass yo ass is safe.
It be not a trick either,
it aint nuthin but a cold-ass lil craft:
mirrors is crafty.
iv
I wanted ta quit this,
dis thuglife flattened against tha wall,
mute n' devoid of colour,
built of pure light,
dis thuglife of vision only, split
n' remote, a lucid impasse.
I confess: dis aint a mirror,
it aint nuthin but a thugged-out door
I be trapped behind.
I wanted you ta peep mah crazy ass here,
say tha releasin word, whatever
dat may be, open tha wall.
Instead you stand up in front of me
combin yo' hair.
v
Yo ass don't like these metaphors.
All muthafuckin right:
Perhaps I be not a mirror.
Perhaps I be a pool.
Think bout pools.
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And I looked at him!
And he looked at me!
And I looked at him!
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
I like it in the trunky!
Every time I trunky,
They all say, "he trunky!"
I am also crunky,
And maybe possibly drunky!
And now I'm singing raps,
Cause I do in the...
"If I don't find that properly mixed with an actual dubstep backing track by the end of the week, I'm going to be seriously disappointed."
A Surprise in the Peninsula
When I came in that night I found
the skin of a dog stretched flat
and nailed upon my wall between the
two windows. It seemed freshly killed –
there was blood at the edges. Not
my dog: I have never owned one,
I rather dislike them. (Perhaps
whoever did it knew that.) It
was a light brown dog, with smooth hair;
no head, but the tail still remained.
On the flat surface of the pelt
was branded the outline of the
peninsula, singed in thick black
strokes into the fur: a coarse map.
The position of the town was
marked by a bullet-hole; it went
right through the wall. I placed my eye
to it, and could see the dark trees
outside the house, flecked with moonlight.
I locked the door then, and sat up
all night, drinking small cups of the
bitter local coffee. A dog
would have been useful, I thought, for
protection. But perhaps the one
I had been given performed that
function; for no one came that night,
nor for three more. On the fourth day
it was time to leave. The dog-skin
still hung on the wall, stiff and dry
by now, the flies and the smell gone.
Could it, I wondered, have been meant
not as a warning, but a gift?
And, scarcely shuddering, I drew out
the nails out and took it with me.
(fleur adcock)