Tutorial
A limerick's a pithy poem
That elicits a laugh or groan.
Copy this rhyme scheme,
And pick out a theme.
We're sure you'll be fine on your own.

Damn Block Schedule
There once was a school that decided
It wanted its classes divided.
On block, half the year
I don't need to be here
To ace the classes I derided.

The American Vampire
There once was a vampire who ate
More girls than he needed to sate
His thirst; he grew fat
His doctor said that
He'd have to start watching his weight.

Twilight Heist
An emo vampire ran amuck
And hijacked an eyeshadow truck.
He showed off his angst
With powders and paints
And hid his joy at his good luck.

Dream
I can only remember one dream from the last few nights. I was in a band room right before a concert. Call time had come and gone, and minutes before the downbeat were in the single digits. My uniform was in good order, a buttoned jacket and straight, black bow tie over a shirt so clean and white and crisp it shone. I was kneeling over a battered, silver tuba. It looked like an instrument called Juicy, one of the two pitiful specimens in the Decatur High band room. At my side was a small, frightened boy. He was nearly in tears. This was his tuba.
Perhaps the law said it belonged to the school, the district, or the state, but any tuba player would have told you it was the sole property of the panicked kid beside me on the floor. The broken-down horn had practically taught him how to play. Through it, he gained a rich, commanding voice that no one could ignore. Hauling it around made him strong. The tuba had changed things, and the boy had come to love it. I didn't dream any of this, his story, but I saw it in his eyes. The horn could have broken spontaneously. School tubas have a way of doing just that for no mechanically explicable reason at the most inconvenient times. Maybe he made one of those mistakes that occur so often in the first few months of learning to handle such big instruments. Perhaps someone else vandalized it or hurt it accidentally and he was as angry as he was scared and sad. I don't remember the tug at my sleeve or hearing him call my name, the garbled, incoherent explanation and plea for help.
All I can recall is kneeling beside him, my hands darting over the valves. I bound something with a bit of wire. I forced something back into its proper shape. I remember his fear: that he wouldn't get to play. This was his first concert, and his mother, his father, someone he loved was in the house. If the tuba didn't sound, he would remember the evening as an embarrassment, not a triumph. The person who had come to hear him play might not know the difference, but he would. I remember hoping his eyes were on my fingers, that he was learning how to do this for himself. Even in dreams, I know it's senior year.
I never looked down at my vest to see whose colors I wore. It was unimportant. The tuba I repaired was likely one at Decatur High. The boy was dressed in the uniform of the Beginning Band of Durham School of the Arts. It didn't matter where I was. Horns are horns, a stage is a stage, and concerts and upset, first year tuba players are the same everywhere. At whatever school, in Durham, in Decatur, in China, or on the moon, I was performing one of those concert night miracles that have almost become routine. The same adrenaline was speeding my hands. The same ice water was flowing in my veins. I was perfectly confident in my own ability to fix this, to keep the section at full strength, to save the show for one kid as someone once did for me.

Anime Weekend Limerick
Who's that ugly girl? She's got no chest,
And with good looks she hasn't been blessed.
That's a bad shade of pink.
Look again! Oh, I think
The girl's just a fat man in a dress.

On the Occasion of Breaking Up
The movie ends; the credits start to roll.
Thoughts I cannot express, words I can't say,
Collide in me like clashing thunderstorms.
The world we made, the things we love turn cold.
Someone made rousing speeches on progress.
We knew change sometimes takes her fees in blood,
But no one cared until your name went on
That list with many more we knew and loved.
Friends slipped away into their private tears,
And left us with no band, no hope, no home.
I know you'd tell me to leave you behind,
To journey past the bounds of this lost land
Where I'm just one more looser on the wrong
Side of the times; too old, too brave to bend.
You'd say to run so far, so fast, this flood,
These rising waters, cannot bury me,
But I can't bear those words, to hear you say
That I should live when all we know has died,
That I should flee though you're chained to this place.
I lie, and I tell you there was no choice
But to depart so that you cannot say
There's nothing to forgive; you understand
Why I came here tonight to break your heart.
The credits finish, and the lights go up.
Those sticky seats reluctantly release
The threadbare bottoms of our worn-out jeans.
We walk outside, and we say our goodbyes
Standing in the halo of the marquee
That glows above us like a cruel mirage.

Portrait in Crayola
My outer edge is frozen steel,
A razor drawn in blue and gray,
A switchblade shining in the sun.
That wicked knife, that cold abyss
Uncaring as the distant stars
Holds those at bay I will not tell
The spending of seventeen years
That makes them longer than an age.

Follow light dancing down the edge.
The metal's pale, blue tint grows rich,
And it becomes the royal hue
Of the people and birds and beasts
Capering on old china plates
In my grandmother's dining room
And curtains hanging dark and thick
From a hall's ceiling to the stage.
My memory is bound in threads
Of mystic azure; locked away
Sleep all the tales I will not tell.

Walk along those threads of night sky
All through the many days and nights.
Pass the shores of a distant lake.
See the haze of approaching heat,
The red of rage, of flame, of blood.
It is the red that drives me on,
Moves my disused tongue to words.
The red of all-consuming flame,
Of love that, burning, will not die
Orders my days and set my course.
It drew a reader from her chair
And sent her on a strange crusade.

Know this, my nature in crayons,
My life sketched on the color wheel,
And you know more of my nature
Than most I meet will ever learn.

The Broken Sousaphone
Golden stranger on the wall,
Morningstar after the Fall,
Who would mount a sousaphone
That could so easily sing on?

Who felled you and robbed for parts
Those valves, stole a dragon's heart?
Who, thou monument to waste,
Made you but a gilded vase?

What pretense, what artifice,
Took that fierce, that blazing life?
What hand left a thunder king
Impotent his storms to fling?

You lived as a cornerstone,
And in death shine on thy bones.
Who destroyed a voice that shook
Football fields? What fingers took

Those great pistons from their work
Shaping the sound, left you to lurk
There upon the art room shelf
Useless to us, to yourself?

Golden stranger on the wall,
Morningstar after the Fall,
Who would mount a sousaphone
That could so easily sing on?

This is my imitation my favorite poem, "The Tiger," by William Blake.

The Tiger
Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Chicago Shoe Girl
My parents were poor, and
We lived in a shoe,
But so did all my friends, and
I never felt it or knew
That some kids got more presents
Or wore brand new clothes.
I never ate pheasants,
But I learned to sew.
I always had paper.
I always had twine.
I had my mother's stapler
And walls with thick, climbing vines.
I made little, clay castles
And played in the park.
We kept books in the toe,
And read when it got dark.