07 Jul 4705 - Public Replies to Private Lines

Purple; a suitable reversal. I was going to share an experience over a reply to an e-letter, but when I went through the ancient archives of my gmail inbox, I discovered both the text I wanted and an intent beyond a simple reply to the sender. Yay, all of you deserve to be in on this one, and I want to show off to everyone. Prepare yourselves, as I breach the sacred gates of temporal causality, and transport you all to the recent past. Strip forth through the wastelands of time, peel back the hours as you would a green orange!
Also do not eat green oranges. Orange greens are probably also no good.

When I first came to campus I knew no one. After a month of time, the fact that I knew no one bored and bothered me enough to get some sidewalk chalk and use it to scribble haiku all over the place. I would leave my email address scrawled next to it so that anyone similarly crazy enough could, if they wished, respond to me. In fact I ended up meeting you all by successive twists of fate that, in addition to pain, seem to be my birthright in this world, before my poetry snared any takers.

Then it snared one.
Naturally, how should anyone reply to a poem but with also a poem. Her name was Marian McLaughlin, and she sent me this randomly one day:

Under Braddock, by the pool,
Find the path, see what he drew,
Anarchy symbols, peace signs, middle fingers,
A dark and damp air slowly lingers,
Honestly, there's Hones Tea,
And stains where napalm bombs exploded,
Corners of the walls erroded,
From rainwater and mucky, murky sewage.
Plenty of guys here spill their fluids,
Jerkin' it off, jerkin' around,
Plenty of girls here with cold backs and bottoms,
From lying about on the stiff, dirty ground.

I was a little put off, but thought I should reply in kind first, with a little explanation myself. First, though, let's analyze this thing.
1. I don't know what "the pool" is, but there are enough of them on campus to be referring to anything, which is to indicate that I went all over the place, which I did.
3. Things that I drew. Except for the middle fingers, though, I would agree. The only metaphorical middle finger I shoved aloft was when I would scribble my work next to someone else's, I suppose serious, sidewalk chalk message. Cheapening it? Dunno. Sure middle fingers. Fair.
4. Don't know where this comes from. It is the beginning of a theme to the poem other than an ode to what I did. This is called juxtaposition of theme (maybe there's another more technical term for it) and it is used to link things. Hence my work is linked to the subtheme, which develops.
5. I'm baffled. Anyone's guess.
6-8. More ground-laying. I thought "by the pool" covered that, but sure, let's pretend the land is war-torn by something. That just makes me question what the land is exactly.
9-10. Gross, but to the point of her theme. Exploitation of women, indolence and arrogance of young men.
11-12. Now totally removed from anything I did, the theme takes over to finish. I was a little upset at this, as it pretended to tell me that my poems had become a serial-rapist.
But I assumed the best and prepared for the worst as I often do by replying in kind.

Hail fair Marian, Undeclared,
 or undecided. Unprepared,
  or unencumbered? Untoward?
Unserving of an Un-Unlord?

Many feminist remedies ready.
 Levy a lee, stem seventy pennies,
  Many agree, less heavy when bended.
A light alee in the city of ladies.

Deserving of three verses hence.
 One litre down for seven pence,
  One hunch upon my backside waits,
Chalk the fates.

So I did a little spying before writing back. I looked up her gmu email address she had used and nailed her. Age, full name, and major. She was young enough to still be undeclared, hence:
1. Assonance was my chosen tool, and it goes all over the place in this poem. First stanza is simply "hello and I know something about you."
4. Her initial poem struck me as being overly friggin' anti, so I point that out here. I guess triple negative is a literary device.
5. I used to like to do this a lot. I call it bouncing lines, but really its just allegorical-grade assonance. Some would even call it tongue-twister. I like to bounce. Anyway, in this line I'm warning that I have a good answer to unbridled and unneeded man-hating.
6. Levy a lee means to attempt compromise. Stem seventy pennies equates the words she gave me to a bunch of unwanted change pouring forth. They each have worth, and together mean a lot, but it makes a mess of things. Also pennies can be young women, Penny being a common enough name, as if everyone I saw on the sidewalk were named Penny and I had to stop them.
7. This line, again, means to entreaty compromise, and coming down from platitudes.
8. This is an allusion to a French short novel. Christine de Pizan, 1405. It means I'm willing to give a little, too, toward the feminism thing, which I caught as a strong vibe from her previous utterance. Maybe I was off base, but you can't go wrong referring to great works (unless you're Ghost in the Shell 2, of course).
9. The three verses are my three stanzas. I was also into self-referential work at the time, often making haiku on the sidewalk that lamented washing away with the rain and so on.
10. This is a callback to a mistake I made about the gas prices in Great Britain at the time. To him I had meant to say quid. I said pence, which is pennies. In this case it also serves to refer back to the second stanza. Basically I threw threads around until the whole poem was a knot, asking to be untangled. Even my untangling here is fairly barebones. There isn't much of my work I like. This one I did.
11. This means my bookbag and my guess. Usually that would be two hunches, but here I juxtapose them. Hah.
12. We have come to terms.

I'll have to write this one in my big black emo beatnik book. First I have to kick this illness, though. Don't know why I'm on this big poetry kick all of a sudden.
Well, okay, no, actually I do know why, but neveryoubusybodiesmindit.

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