You too can read my work!
Shenanigans * My Poetry Chapbook
Summer 2013
Shenanigans is experiential learning project comprised of 12 poems. It highlights the main essence of the readings from English 563 (Survey of World Literature). It is a chapbook of poetry that “rewrites” prose or drama works into poetic format. Original prose or dramatic works include works from Ancient India; India’s Classical Age, Encounters with Islam, Europe and the New World, Enlightenment in Europe and the Americas, Realism across the World, Modernity and Modernism, Postwar and Postcolonial Literature, and Contemporary World Literature.
Excerpt
There is No Peace was inspired by Akutagawa Ryunosuke. He was considered “one of the major writers of early twentieth-century Japan” (1280). He drew from the works of others, as he wrote in the Taisho era. This era (late 1910s through the 1920s) was considered “a time of high cultural play and experimentation” (1291).
The poem was inspired by a murder case that Ryunosuke wrote about called “In a Bamboo Grove.” It was also my take on the Trayvon Martin murder. I knew expected the list of murdered black men to grow as large as it has since 2013.
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There Is No Peace
(Inspire By Akutagawa Ryunosuke)
9-1-1:
“What’s your emergency?”
Man:
“There a hooded black man sneaking around here. He must be armed and dangerous.”
9-1-1:
“Leave him alone, lest you find a situation that’s treacherous.”
Man:
“I must get the fool before he does a crime. That’s what their type likes to do.”
Victim:
“Hey, look out man, who in the hell are you?”
Man:
“You are up to no good, just like your damn kind.”
Victim:
“I’m going to my house, just a few blocks up, the blue one is mine.”
A grown man against a child, that’s no match to be sure.
They tussle, they roll, an altercation ultimately ensues.
A shot rang out loud and clear.
The child is dead, the man can only jeer.
“I got another one, a notch on my belt.”
So what, the child called out for help.
A child’s life is lost, so young, so short.
In all of our hearts, there is a knot.
An arrest, a trial, perhaps, this time, justice will prevail.
Murder, the case, will the man go to jail?
In the end, the same refrain will never cease.
For a murder young black man, there is no peace!