On the one hand, poetry, an incredibly diverse form of art, can offer a deep and emotional insight into the mind of its writer. On the other hand, it can serve as a platform to simply string pretty words together with little to no deeper meaning. From English majors to engineers, all types of students use poetry as a creative outlet. Take a peek into the minds of creative Cal Poly students who shared their original poetry with KCPR.
Several of the following poems reference explicit content.
This poem was written by mechanical engineering junior Emily Mendyke.
It fills the air with its thick scent
whose heavy body slams into my chest.
I breathe it in.
The air is thin with a frigidity,
face cold with lividity.
The sting from the impact I openly welcome,
it brings a comfort of comfortable numbness,
and thoughts return of moments seldom,
as I stand solitary in pleasant darkness.
The thundering patter accelerates.
Crescendos and amplifies its pace,
it roars and bellows,
mistakenly in rage.
My thoughts its steps will overpower,
overcome by incessant showers.
While misery concurs and is often displayed
often equated,
whose likened mind seems alike to sorrow in the human race.
Still yet it fades this magnificent rain,
devastating dissipation of it’s incredible captivation
leaving only desolate lonely remains
i’ll chase it in vain,
and yearn for its blanket to soak me again.
This poem was written by mechanical engineering sophomore Liam Dunsmore.
Within in a sea of worn denim
stands the corduroy cowboy
Shrouded In darkness
Beneath the clouded night
It’s scenes like these
That bring back false reminiscence
Of places I’ve never been
And memories that aren’t mine
Now all behind me
Perhaps in a past life
I look forward
Forward to a new tomorrow
Where I’ll be my own corduroy cowboy
Carving adventure wherever I roam
“The Moon Sees Us” was written by communication studies freshman Demaree Lewis.
There we stood under the relentless shine of the moon
And you say to me
“Remember,
We will always be under the same moon”
Your voice still echoing in my mind
The light glowing against your freckled skin,
Your full lips resting slightly ajar
The same way they always do
Your chest slowly rising and falling,
I know you feel as safe as I do
I could stay here for a thousand lifetimes.
And with unwavering certainty, never be bored of our love
Serendipity
Nothing could ever compare
Yet this moment only exists in the forefront of my mind
For you are a moon away
But still, we dance under the same moonlight
Miles apart, completely in sync
Until we can find ourselves wrapped in the arms of the other
And you must remind me again
that it is the same moon
that savors the blending of our souls
Under its light
Only the moon could appreciate our love
The quiet hours of our world
The town sleeps
While we can only begin to attempt
To take every second we have
To remind the moon of our connection
For I know that a week from now
You’ll be a moon away
I’ll crave the gentle touch of your fingertips
The soft tsch tsch of the kisses your lips would leave on my skin
Sending shivers throughout my whole being
But you’ll be a moon away
This poem was written by statistics senior Charlotte Matthews.
I can run faster than you in new tennis shoes
I have picked all the seeds off the silver birch tree
and I have crushed them between my fingers
I have cut my dress on the barbed wire fencing
outside the pastures
The leaves are falling off the trees in new colors
and the snow is coming
There are only so many autumns
I have gotten lost in this corn maze
My shoe has come untied
I will walk through the castle again
I will look out of the tall glass windows
Le lac est très profond
I put my head under and swam down four feet
I came back up and felt the warmth of the sunlight on my shoulders
I thought about the black water
I never spoke French well
“The Middle And” was written by mathematics senior Gregory Leathrum.
Palindromes are interesting
Is matching the forwards and backwards
Fascinating? It’s confusing: metaphors
Become fact.
Metaphors: are they shadows,
Hiding truth in wings
And mixing them as bad as
Splitting infinitive?
Plurals are nonsensically
invented rules
And
Rules invented
nonsensically are plurals.
Infinitive splitting:
As bad as them mixing,
And wings in truth hiding shadows:
They are metaphors.
Fact become metaphors. Confusing?
It’s fascinating:
Backwards and forwards, the matching is interesting.
Are palindromes?
“May flowers” was written by English junior Rebekah Yahner.
At first a small bud, shy of the world
Then, with the steady urging of April showers
comes your bright little faces,
modestly turning towards the sun, anew
Like paper, delicate and tender
when the soil is dry and the time is passed,
you crumple and return to the earth from which you came.
With purpose every year you appear
to remind me
that lovely things can be fleeting,
yet still lovely.
This poem was written by graphic design sophomore Mairi O’Toole.
This poem was written by theater arts senior Heidi Le Huynh.
Flavor of the week
Temporary chic
Girl of the month
Forget me by next year
Nothing ever lasts but fuck if I’d want it to
Pass me around.
“Wild things” was written by environmental engineering sophomore Gustav King.
Sea of wild reeds,
Disturbed only by wild bodies
Grasses wheat and winds,
Flowing, giving life, to a chilly night of spring
In these wild hills
We laugh, cry, we love, make,
Beds of golden verdure, soft and knotted,
Rise from the earth in early moonlit hours
Roots that tangle wild hearts and legs,
Souls, bound down to the ground below
A steadfast moon marking many hours past
As words unspoken pass through cloven lips
Tongue and mind satisfied,
For the chocolate tastes divine
This poem was written by art and design senior Ellery Lewark.
Sometimes I feel like an agent of darkness
a dark hornet
there’s a dark hornet buzzing in my chest
I see myself
Smiling and laughing
At the airport hugging them good bye
I hear their hearts beat
I hear the whir of jets in the sky
we turn and watch our feet touch
Tires against the street pavement
don’t say much of anything
just listen
I feel their hearts beating
And the hornet buzzing in my chest
I watch the days pass
the sun madly chase the moon
I make coffee
I dance in my room
light a candle made from beeswax
I do my schoolwork
I go to class
I lay down in the night and drift into sleep
Close my eyes
try to keep still and hush my limbs that might leap
from the edge of my bed
in my head a veil lowers and I begin to forget myself
quiet
still
But the hornet’s buzzing in my chest
I stand in crescent shadows of the leaves
The eclipse shadows
The bright, cookie cutter sickles
I pray with the crowd
Bowed heads whisper
these bees pray loudly because he listens
or so I’m told
shrouds glint and land on secret plans
Low chants in the cool glimmer
Raised hands
There’s a humming prayer in the air
I lower my head
Listen to the sermon
things said in keeping with the dead,
Or so I’m told
but my black dress is sheer
I can feel them staring
one eye raised toward me
‘She’s not one of us’
I cover my chest with my hands
sway slowly to the music
Not one of the rest
They can hear it
They can see it
The hornet, buzzing in my chest
“If the Stars are Satellites” was written by journalism freshman Kat Orozco.
If the stars are satellites then call me a fool.
Like a child afraid of heights reaching on a stepping stool.
My hands are open— they’re stretched and they’re frozen.
They’re grabbing and hopin’— but the stool must be broken.
And if you are the sun then I am Icarus falling.
As my wings become undone the ground starts calling.
Touched by your heat— my heart’s made of wax.
I go down in defeat— melted wings on my back.
This poem was written by history graduate student Chloe Cushing.
Damning up rivers –
Cities must thrive
Pulling up trees –
It’s absolutely fine
Dehydrating the land –
Oh, what a shock
Looking at shade like litter –
Build another block
Astonished, they are,
Enraged, they say –
We’re turning into sand
And they can’t explain it away
This poem was written by single-subject credential graduate student Julia Glidden.
I could ruin you,
I would ruin you.
You could slip on the ooze and rot
From your pristine marble white pedestal
Desperately built from
the applause of thieves and rapists.
So high above everything else
one whisper,
one slip,
Would produce a such a satisfactory splat.
Even if below you were that pool
Of recognition and acceptance
I tried to convince you that you deserved.
Alas, you were right
You don’t deserve that
And you coaxed me into loving every puss
Filled pocket in your brain
So, the guilt from the seed you spilt
over them
Wouldn’t eat you from the scrotum up.
“Invocation” was written by English senior Caroline Horn.
Last night I shoved
my fist into a pint of sticky
chocolate ice cream and felt
like Jack Kerouac,
and this morning I felt
the warmth between my hands
from a mug of black coffee, I drank
alone at a diner that I was planning
to go on a date to.
And Jack Kerouac used to live
in that little blue house right there,
you know? And Jack Kerouac wasn’t a sensitive
artist in a turtleneck with bongos, and he wasn’t a hippie.
No, he was a cowboy.
Most people don’t get that. Most people really don’t
get him the way I do; I’ll say to another
boy whose eyes are beginning to glaze
over but who nods
anyway. Well, I’ve had my fair
share of hippies and cowboys,
and I’ve walked down
along the mission creek and
I’ve driven till I could
hear the “shoo-shaw-shirsh”*
of the sea and ate apple pie and ice
cream for breakfast and I still feel
like my poems come up short
of something worth anything
to write on computer paper.
And every time I cry my mom tells
me I’m not trusting God enough, but I think
God lets me cry and knows
I trust Him. Half of the Psalms are laments anyways. And I
laugh about you thinking you were that
in love with me. Was it all the poems
you didn’t understand but read anyway?
Maybe my poems are like
my paintings and they’re all lacking
something because I haven’t been in love with
someone since the summer after senior year.
Or maybe it’s like my film photography
and my youth is less fleeting and more fleeted. Even
when I try to write about love,
the poems end up being more about me
or growing up or Joni Mitchell or God or Jack Kerouac.
This poem was written by mechanical engineering sophomore Noah Dunsmore.
She stood there
In a complex stance
With deep eyes and eager questions
Does that cloud look nice and fluffy?
I reached for a bite
And laughed at its taste and texture
“the goldback fern” was written by English junior Paige Clayton.
nestled within a shady California woodland
“gold” powder sleeps on freshly lobed fronds
frequently visited by wayfarers, seeking
temporary tattoos from leaves coated in
the deliberate dust of drought adaptation.
‘goldback’ seems to sing a silvery track, but
specifies an underside of sickly brown spores
pimpling the pale backs of Pentagramma-s.
they could be confused for muddy caterpillar
footprints on clean green grouted floors,
or the rancid residue from a pressurized puffball —
the aerosol sneeze of a perforated mushroom.
and though there is no reflected glint in the
glass of a tattooed traveler’s goldback gaze,
I wouldn’t be surprised if a beam of brown
shot across the freckled nighttime sky, for I
have learned that ferns, worms, fresh dirt,
and the tangled rivers of old nestled roots
are the newborns and ancestors
of the type of life
found in cellular nuclei
supernovas
and plant nodes —
an enigmatic nexus.
