Lazy, Old Ted (Three Limericks)

There once was a man named Ted

Who lost his good hat before bed

He searched high and low

Little did he know

It was sitting on top of his head

Ted had a wife named Daisy

She claimed that her husband was crazy

Ted said, “I am ill!

I cannot pay the bill!”

Sure enough, Ted was just being lazy.

This man Ted turned on the television

But felt guilty about his decision

So he picked Daisy flowers

Bunching them up for hours

And tied a bouquet with precision.

Under the Harvest Moon

The poem, Under the Harvest Moon, by Carl Sandburg includes many elements of poetry. This poem includes a lot of imagery. I first see a full moon shining over a garden, then I see red roses in the summer. The  way Sandburg describes the moon, "When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights," is very poetic and much more interesting than just saying the moon is silver. In the line, "Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers," I think this was meant to be a metaphor. It is literally saying that those who have passed away may not be physically there, but haven't forgotten about the memories shared. Sandburg uses personification by making death come and whisper. I think that the line, "Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With a thousand memories, And asks you Beautiful, unanswerable questions," is also a metaphor. Love doesn't actually have hands, but comes unexpectedly and brings memories that make someone think hard about life. This line is also personifying love. In the line, "Drips shimmering," I found assonance and there is alteration in the line, "Love, with little hands." There isn't any rhyme in this poem, so I think it was meant to be free verse. This poem was split up into two stanzas and it is almost like they are different poems, but they go together. They both start with , "Under the..." and each one represented a season, the first one fall, and then summer. I think Carl Sandburg wrote this poem to try to describe these two beautiful seasons. He used things that we would see in the fall such as "harvest moon" and garden nights." In the second stanza, he used words that bring summer to my mind like "summer roses." This poem was narrated in third person and doesn't tell a story, but describes objects. I think this poem has a satisfying ending because it ends with, "...With a thousand memories, And asks you Beautiful, unanswerable questions." This is satisfying because it leaves me thinking about and questioning my memories. 

Three Haikus

Fresh Air, Crisp as toast

The Fragrant smell of lilacs

Melting in my nose.

Needles leap from trees

Eager to someday grow up

And shade their children.

Pencils on paper

Air filled with conversations

Daring to be heard.

A Life Misunderstood

I have seen several trash cans filled with neglected food and materials,
The ground on which people stand, along with gooey clumps of sticky saliva
And sometimes, briefly, a gaping whole like those in space that are left with an unpleasant surprise-
Only to spit me out.

I hear gags, caused by my revolting smell,
And the giggles and shouts from others.
The high-pitched screams that ring in the ears
Of those who surround my victim.

I feel squished by fingers as fat as sausages
And the souls of shoes grinding me to a dust,
I am a miserable, misunderstood millipede.
A forbidden, fearful fly.

I long to be desirable;
To be held in a safe
Where treasures are kept
And valuables are treated with care.

I accept that I am unwanted,
That I am hated,
That my presence in the world has only a negative outcome
And the answer to my problems does not rest in my hands,
But in the hearts of others.

Po' Boys Blues

The poem, Po' Boy Blues, by Langston Hughes is an honest poem about himself in a time that wasn't very happy for him. In this poem, the first phrase of every stanza is repeated. I think this was done to put emphasis on those words. The vocabulary that he uses adds character to the poem and I know more about him because of it. Words like "de" instead of "the" and the word "an'" instead of "and." In the line, "When I was home de Sunshine seemed like gold," I think that the poet used a more interesting way to say that he was a poor boy growing up and was very grateful for the free gifts like sunshine. In the line, "Since I come up North de Whole damn world's turned cold," the poet gives the reader more information about where he was from, and he must have come from somewhere southern and then moved North. This poem has a good sense of rhythm and flows really well with each word. The rhyme scheme to this poem is every second, fourth and sixth line, but I don't know if there is a pattern name for that. The line, "But this world is weary An' de road is hard an' long," is a metaphor. I think what he is literally saying is that sometimes things got harder for him and seemed like they would never end. One of the hard parts of life for him was a relationship with a woman who spent his money and made him feel like he was going crazy. I gathered this from the line, "She made me lose ma money An' almost lose ma mind." In the last stanza, Hughes repeats the word "weary" many times. I think he does wrote it this way because weary means tired and it shows that he is too tired too say anything more. The last line of this poem, “I wish I’d never been born,” is very strong and left me thinking about it. It summarizes the whole poem in a powerful, but sad way.

Nouns Coming to Life

Depression is a Fog Grey closet, filled with Emptiness

Disgust is the Nickel Silver hair resting on my Salad

Envy is Emerald Green dancing with my Enemy

Embarrassment is a Rhubarb Red slip on the Stage

An Idea is the kingfisher blue rushing River

Delight is the Lemon Yellow frosting on a Cupcake 

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r

The poem, r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r, by e.e.cummings brought the image of a grasshopper to my mind once I finally figured out what the poem actually said and I decoded the words. The grasshopper I imagined looked up and leaped. In this part of the poem, the letters that spelled out "leaps" were expressed in a way to make it look like the word itself was leaping.  Other words like “become” were spelled inside of parentheses and in between words. This poem seemed more free verse than to have a specific rhythm or rhyme because I couldn't find a pattern in the words. However there was alliteration repeating the “R” sound in the words, “arriving to rearrangingly...” The assonance I found in this poem was in the words "Leaps" and "arriving." There was no onomatopoeia I could find, but the way this poem was written with random page breaks, punctuation, and misspellings made it very interesting and caused me to spend quite a bit of time breaking it down to figure out what the words meant. The word “Grasshopper” was repeated four times throughout the poem, all spelled differently. Though this poem was not told from the grasshopper's point of view, I visualized it through the eyes of a grasshopper. I think e.e. cummings wrote about this grasshopper because it taught the lesson of finding one's true self. This poem started out with a jumbled up word that I couldn't make sense of, but slowly became less confusing throughout the poem and by the end was a real word. The grasshopper kept changing and leaping to new places until finally after all of that rearranging, became who it wanted to be. The words were spelled with capitals in the middle instead of beginning and punctuation before the word such as “.gRrEaPsPhOs.” I think this was done to make it seem like the words were trying to rearrange themselves in different ways until they liked the way they turned out, even if it isn't what people would expect. The repetition of the word “grasshopper” gave the poem a good beginning, middle, and end because each time it was spelled differently until the last try turned out right.  The language used in this poem was simple and direct, but it didn't actually make sense to me until I understood the theme of the poem.  This message is very relatable because everybody goes through times when they can’t figure out who they are or who they want to be. These decisions can be easy and simple to make, but can also be very hard and life changing. Whoever it is a person (or grasshopper) decides to be, should only be based upon what makes them happy.

Opposite Musical Terms

Allegro	VS.	Andante
Fortissimo	VS.	Pianissimo
Legato	VS.	Staccato
Sharp	VS.	Flat
Treble	VS.	Bass
Crescendo	VS.	Diminuendo
Ritardando	VS.	Accelerando
Harmony	VS.	Homophony
Major	VS.	Minor
ACapella	VS.	Instrumental
Slur	VS.	Breath Mark
Arpeggio	VS.	Chord
Solo	VS.	Duet
Sixteenth Note	VS.	Whole Note
Repeat	VS.	D.S. Al Coda
Swung	VS.	Syncopated
Key Signature	VS.	Accidental
Calmly	VS.	Intense
Del Segno	VS.	Coda
Divide	VS.	Unison
Waltz Time	VS.	Common Time
Dotted Half Note	VS.	Eighth Note
Double Bar Line	VS.	Fermata

Forest At Night

The ear-piercing call of a mysterious, wise owl.
Crackling leaves under the paws of a furry family of masked bandits
and their striped, frightened friend regretting he ever went on a midnight stroll.
The ominous, ghostly, frigid wind
causing the evergreens, tall enough to touch the stars, to slowly sway
Back and Forth,
Back and Forth.
Far in the distance, is the rushing of a strong, flowing creek
filled with water in search of its true home,
And almost as lost as I am.
The moon peeks through the trees
like a child playing hide-and-seek,
Seeking the darkness
With the stars curiously interacting in the game.
Distorted Monsters jump out of my mind
into the emptiness that stood before me.
Fresh, crisp air and the scent of pine needles
fill the pitch black space surrounding me.
But do not protect me
from whatever may lie beyond my eyes.
The moon, unable to find the darkness,
says goodnight as it pulls up its blanket of fog.
And a second hoot from the owl,
sends a chill down my spine.