Monday, October 31, 2005

the first essence [1]

Unless I'm railroaded onto the topic of linguistics (and how they ruined the year 2003) or poetry, I have an overwhelmingly positive view of my alma mater. Let me explain those poetic misgivings. Seattle Pacific University is quite keen on encouraging students to pursue their vocation (in contrast to occupation). They see a student's time on campus as a four year spirit quest, but instead of wandering into the forest to find one's power-animal, its more of an academically christian pursuit. in any case, while on this path to vocational enlightenment, i was astonished to discover that my future lay in poetry. i was a poet laureate in waiting, tennyson with the touch of a smile: andrew, lord david. however (cue angry crashing chords), no sooner did i discover my poetic supremacy then my poetic dreams were dashed by the university's yearly arts journal. You see, the myopic editorial staff of Second Essence refused to publish some of my finest work. Thus, I was forced to pursue a life of Crime and Delinquency (or more accurately and long-windedly put: attend the class, acquire a sociology minor, and spend the next three years working with schizophrenics at a federal hospital). To spite this otherwise fine institution and to finally give my poems their due, I will periodically post my jilted verse here on the 17 point scale. These poems come from the unpublished Poems Written in Brady's UCORE Notes at 3AMish. It is unavailable in stores, but please feel free to contact me if you are interested in signed copies of any of the poems.

Here is the third poem from this anthology:

Goose
White, frosted flakes
Raise high, swiftly

(an interesting anecdote: this poem so moved me that i later took to using the term 'goose' as a curse word of sorts. i wish you the same touching experience)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Will the signed copy say Andrew, Lord David?

andrew said...

if you so desire...but i think i'd have to practice that signature; its a little rusty at the moment.

Anonymous said...

How did linguistics ruin the year 2003?

andrew said...

i'm sure you've heard this story before...in short, after long battles with the administration, brady and i were both forced to bump our total humanities course load by 3 credits, even after walking at graduation. (remember, this is me, the english major; the guy with a thousand humanities credits. garrrrrr). so we elected to take linguistics by cassette tape. perhaps it wouldn't have been so horrible, except that a. brady sprinted through the course while simultaniously (?) cramming for the cpa test. and b. my gpa hinged on getting on an 'A' -- if I got an 'A-' it would drop me from a summa best laude to a summa second-best laude. thus, i actually had try for this stupid class after i felt like i'd already graduated. and you know me, that meant that spent WAY TOO MUCH TIME on it in 2003.