Poetry about hell… and Roy from Smash Brothers
I’m not sure how or why this happened, but apparently I penned a few poems about hell. The first poem is my “main” hell poem, followed by a poem that is about both hell and Roy from Super Smash Brothers: Melee, equally. Let’s see how dark my high school mind could get:
A poem about hell, followed by a poem about hell and Roy from Super Smash Brothers: Melee
Transcript:
The descent.
Through the cloud;
Off a cliff;
Into the needles
—Of a blackberry bush.
The voice of death
Whirring in your head
The descent into hell—
You know that you’re dead.
The same from all places
The distance of the journey is
For central the location be
Of Auburn’s room 296.
Wow… talk about anticlimax. I’m guessing that my creative writing class met in room 296. Anyway, that poem is followed by a rough draft of the next poem. Moving along, here is that second poem:
Gripping, masculine, muscular hands
In hell, no-one can hear you—
Play Smash Brothers—
I guess Roy really IS flaming!
A few things:
- Roy is a character from Super Smash Brothers: Melee (originally from the Fire Emblem video game series), and I never liked him. His sword often bursts into the flame in the game, so I liked to call him things like “flaming idiot” and “flaming loser.” At the time, “to flame” someone meant “to insult” someone; I often had “flame wars” with my friend Captain, who of course LOVED Roy.
- The imagery of tightly gripped hands could apply to Roy’s very heavy in-game sword, but it ends up implying the grip used to hold a controller. This gives the Smash Brothers poem actual poetic validity, which both annoys and pleases me.
- I wonder why I specified “blackberry bush” in my first poem?
I like that my seemingly serious attempt at a poem about death/hell devolved into a stupid comment about my high school creative writing classroom, but my stupid anecdotal poem about a character I hated in Smash Brothers resulted in the creation of some actual legitimate poetry.
I’ve always been told that the best material comes from your passions. I was VERY passionate about Smash Brothers in high school (and college… and now), so I guess it makes sense that some semblance of creativity would have come out of me when writing about Roy.
…still feels totally ridiculous, though.
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
My high school persona and student-teacher relationships
I already mentioned when I posted my letter to my creative writing teacher that she was previously my English teacher during my sophomore year of high school. I found an AIM conversation – that’s AOL Instant Messenger, for those of you born five years after me – that I think will help elucidate my relationship with her (as well as my high school persona) even further.
Talking to students online wasn’t exactly the norm back then, but she was a more young, cutting-edge teacher, and frankly I thought her willingness to be available to students was commendable. By the time you finish reading this conversation, however, I’m afraid you may understand why more teachers prefer not to be messaged while at home.
Don’t worry: despite this seemingly infuriating conversation from my sophomore year, I’m currently Facebook friends with her, and we got along quite swimmingly my senior year of high school (somehow).
I won’t follow this conversation with any thoughts, because frankly, it speaks for itself (and by “speaks for itself,” I mean “is hilarious on its own”). So enjoy!
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This blog entry is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
My education: a little background
Before I get too far into my 10-Year Idea Reunion, I’d like to provide a little background on my education. Despite my self-referential, tongue-in-cheek, smartass poetry and stories, I did in fact receive a quite advanced education leading up to the creative writing class I took my senior year of high school.
In addition to having read The Iliad, The Odyssey, most of Plato’s The Republic, and several other scholarly works by my sophomore year of high school, we delved into advanced literary criticism at the beginning of my senior year of A.P. English Literature. Here is one particular excerpt from my notes from my first semester of my senior year that stood out to me:
Be sure to pay attention to the “Good day in Dimmesdale’s life” section
Highlights (Italics added):
- Chillingworth starts to talk about sex, beats himself into an orgasm
- Both Chillingworth and Dimmesdale exist in an S&M relationship
- Beat yourself to get released from the beating
Frankly, I remember virtually nothing from A Scarlet Letter (who does?!), but it certainly was important that we talked in class about people beating themselves into an orgasm. Was that seriously part of the book? I somehow doubt it, but we sure interpreted it that way!
My classmates and I were handling very adult material by the time we were 15 (I took these particular notes when I was 17), so it’s not like the nonsensical scribbling in my idea notebook are indicative of my educational background; on the contrary, they are indicative of someone who had chosen to neglect to utilize that educational background, instead focusing on the pursuit of irreverence and… wow, this sentence has a lot of vocabulary words in it, maybe I should just keep extending it in an attempt to exacerbate the illusion of SHOOT I CAN’T THINK OF ANY MORE BIG WORDS, IT APPEARS THAT ALL GOOD THINGS MUST INDEED COME TO AN END.
**UPDATE: In an extremely bizarre turn of events, it was just brought to my attention that The Onion posted a satirical piece about The Scarlet Letter only two days ago. I guess great minds think alike! And so, apparently, do The Onion and I.
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This blog entry is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
“Bad Ernest Hemingway Movie” Notes
Apparently, I wasn’t a big fan of an Ernest Hemingway movie we watched in my sophomore English class in high school.
First of all, yes, I know I misspelled his name, but thank you for pointing out that mistake I made 12 years ago. But moving along, my teenage brain had some pretty hilarious comments about the film interspersed with my notes:
“A stupid bull was charging some ugly guy in a dream”
Love the specificity there.
“That guy ate bull testacles – what a stupid @$#?!!!”
And here I thought I was an adventurous eater!
“They burn all the mother*$?!@!ing s*@?!! after the festival”
I don’t even think I was complaining about anything… I’m pretty sure I just felt like using excessive profanity.
“Hemmingway [sic] was born & raised in Chicago
Called it a place of wide somethings
and narrow minds”
I’d never lived in Chicago, but at least now I know my notes are accurate: this city is, indeed, a place of narrow minds and – more than anything else – wide somethings.
“Ernie liked boxing, hunting, fishing & shooting”
This isn’t really that funny, but I’m mildly amused that I called him “Ernie” in my notes ^_^
“The crazy Brit bought Red Fox urine”
I’m sure there was an actual context here, as fox urine is probably a thing that has to do with hunting… but I’m not sure if I’m calling Hemingway or someone else “the crazy Brit.” Either way, I rule.
I’ve mentioned in previous posts that our class notes were graded – including this class. So I have no earthly idea how this slipped through the cracks. Maybe I was really testing my teacher to see if she would actually read them? Maybe she didn’t care?
Wow! Now I know how historians feel about the great mysteries of history…
Apocalypse Now: Now Starring Kilgore
We watched “Apocalypse Now” during my junior year of high school. I scanned through several pages of notes, but only one sentence stood out. See if you can find it. I wonder what I had against Kilgore?
I SHOULD HAVE BEEN SOCRATES!!!
Me: I SHOULD HAVE BEEN SOCRATES!!!
Teacher: No, you should’ve been listening!
It looks like I was keeping a running tally of mistakes by “N.B.” (I don’t know who that could be) during a class that covered some of Socrates’ philosophy, as evidenced by the quote:
“The mark of one who knows is to know what he does not know.”
But clearly, the teacher was unimpressed. Ah, sophomore high school English. Makes me feel so… philosophical.
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