Career Day

I'm beginning to like poetry...well writing it anyway. They are much shorter than stories and I can basically write whatever i want. It's pretty awesome. I guess my problem with poetry is that it is so subjective. You can read a line a billion different ways and see it from different angles. Unless you have some sense of who the author is then trying to make sense of words he or she put together can be hard.

Luckily working in poetry groups (assigned by the professor and who we have to work with the whole detour down poetry road) means the author (us) can explain what we were attempting to get at.

Mr. Teddy Bear assigns a theme for each poem we have to write. Tuesday we had to write about a tradition, today we had to write about a profession. Something that interests us enough to compose a poem. At first i was going to write about about a doctor. I mean it was my life for the last 20 or years so i figured I'd take a stab at it. After a while of drumming out ideas it just got all cliche and i ditched it.

What did I ditch it for...Prostitution. Hey everyone needs a voice and though i have no interest in selling or being sold for sexual favors i was compelled by a history lecture to write about the profession of Prostitution.

In the 11th grade i was taking a history of... something. We dealt with Empires and the age of Rulers and Tyrants. I remember one lesson vividly because i ended up basing a short story on what i learned. My teacher was going over the Mesopotamia Empire. From what i remember this Empire was like the Gotham City of the Ancient World. It was pretty well developed, rich, powerful, and ruled by Kings. Did i mention it was also big on prostitution. Having a very conservative History teacher at the time i didn't figure she would continue to talk about the prostitution aspect of this Empire. But she did

Apparently the women used to sit on the steps of these large palaces that held the most powerful men of the time, and wait until one of them walk down these stairs, tapped them on the shoulder, and well...we know what happens after that.

For a 17 year old i wasn't so appalled by this...i actual thought it was kind of romantic. I mean i was looking past the whole sexual thing but more on the slight brush against the shoulder by some powerful figure who wanted to spend the night with you.

It's probably the only thing i remember from the whole class and inspired me later to write a short story based on that scene alone. So after ditching the doctor angle i thought...hey i could about a prostitute except i would have to ignore the professors suggestion to "describe what they do at this job"

Surprisingly the poem came to me pretty quick in the corner of the library i was hiding in. The only quasi -sexual reference i made was :

"Whispering unto her neck

The promises of riches

From the mouths of prosperous men"

I figured it had "she may be a hooker" written all over it but without being overtly sexual. I signed my name next to the last line of the poem,:

"As long as she received the many

Kisses from the darkness of the Night"

And was ready for the critiques to come. My group is pretty awesome. There's this older dude who was in the army, some kid who plays in a band, and a girl who hasn't really participated much and wasn't there today...so i guess 2 of my group members are really great. We help each other a lot in trying to come up with ideas and are critiques are helpful. The dude in a band really likes to write you can tell because he kept saying "i really like to write". He was super excited about his poem about a sculptor and we could tell because before we started critiquing he exclaimed "i really like this poem that i wrote" *wink wink*.

Once you say something like that how the hell do you critique someones poem who obviously loved what he wrote. it's like giving the reader a "you better say something nice about my poem" precursor. Nonetheless we both gave him great remarks but more on him being proud of the poem rather than our reaction to it.

Next we critiqued my poem and apparently my tongue in cheek approach flew past my group members. It wasn't until i said "I know prostitution was a weird profession to write about" did the light bulbs go off in there heads. The band guy thought i was writing about someone on a boat.????

Apparently the "Whispering, Embracing, Brushing" was not a clear ringer for a prostitute.

After having to point out the sexual references to convince them that she was a prostitute (which was embarrassing enough) i had to explain the Mesopotamia Empire, and how sexually involved they were.

I think i will stay away from writing about hookers in the poems to come, i can't bear having to explain sexual activities to people and i don't want anyone getting the wrong idea.

Time to study.