National Poetry Month: Week Three

Oh Dorothy, what a peach. 

     One thing I have discovered throughout this National Poetry Month blogging experience is that quite a few of the poems I love are very long. This is surprising to me because my love for poetry is tentative at best-- I far prefer to write it than to read it because poetry can very easily become incredibly dense and pretentious. But I think the reason why I actually do like some longer poems is because I don't necessarily need poems to be coherent or completely understandable. I know that when I write poetry, I don't always really know what I'm saying, it just feels right when I'm writing it, and it sounds pretty. So I am often drawn to poems that have passages or lines that, well, just sound pretty. On the other hand, there are a few short poems that I absolutely adore. This week's poem is a poem that I identify with greatly and never fails to make me laugh. It's so sarcastic. You can practically hear her rolling her eyes as she wrote it. I will be reciting this poem to my children, and who knows, maybe I'll get it engraved on my tombstone. It's a short little diddy by the fabulously witty and way-ahead-of-her-time Dorothy Parker, and it's called "Comment":

Comment

By Dorothy Parker

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

A medley of extemporanea; 

And love is a thing that can never go wrong; 

And I am Marie of Roumania.

Since Parker's theme is kind of a jab at how overrated and lusted after the concepts of happiness and love are, I'm going to incriminate myself  (at least in Parker's eyes) by sharing one of the few love poems I've written. I do have to give you a disclaimer though: this poem is not about me. It's not about anyone I know. It's not about anything that's ever happened to me. Poetry is a funny business because sometimes poems are written from the perspective of the poet, but more often than not, they are written from the perspective of some random speaker that doesn't necessarily exist in reality at all. In other words, I am not the speaker of this poem. Please don't read this poem and then call me up and ask me why I didn't tell you about my new boyfriend, or ask me who the "inspiration" for this poem was. This poem is just as fictional, I promise, as my actual love life. Feel free to roll your eyes or gag at the sappiness of it. 

I know, I know

Colors

by Dakota Vaughn

Black guy in a white car

Took me to go gaze at the stars

(The same ones I see every night

Might I remind)

But tonight they look brighter

(At least in my mind)

Big hands on

Steering wheel

I wonder if he

Can tell how I feel

The blush that I’m wearing

Is not powdered on

It came when I watched him

Reach out, change the song

And I thought

For split second

He was reaching for me

And when he didn’t, I realized

I wanted him to be.

His necklace

(A gold cross)

Glows under street lamps

I want to reach out,

Take it into my hands

Another thing that glows (a bit)

Are his teeth, like neon white

When he grins in the darkness

His smile gives off light

I want to touch his arm

And see it next to mine

Coffee next to cream

Course hairs next to fine

He is beauty

(Or: the most I’ve seen)

When I mentioned this briefly

He asked what I mean

I thought for a while before I replied

Taking his braceleted wrist

“When I’m with you I feel like a butterfly:

I see colors that don’t exist.”

-VaughnDL