Students wrote "creepy translations" of original published poems. Check out these versions of Dream Deferred, Sonnet 18, Spring and All, and more!
Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes
What happens to a delayed dream?
Does it get charred
Like a baby on a spit?
Or persist like a cough
that will become fatal?
Does it smell like rotting flesh?
Or a basement
full of distraught souls?
Maybe it just slumps
like a legless man.
Or does it crumble like the world?
The Road Taken
TWO people diverged in a yellow wood,
And not sorry I could kill both
And be one traveler, with my hood
And followed one as long as I could
To where he turned into the undergrowth
Then took the other, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better fight,
Because it was bloody and made me wear;
Though as for that the passing time there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step or heartbeat.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I would ever be caught.
I shall be eating his thigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two men devoured in a wood, and I—
I was the one who caused them to die,
And
that has led to my indifference.
What happens to a dead man’s body?
Does it dry up
Like a flower thats cut?
Or Does it continue to roll
until it takes its toll?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or shrink and shrivel
within a week?
Maybe it just swells up
and can it decompose?
or does it just explode?
DayStar
She wanted a little room for thinking:
but she saw diapers steaming
on the line,(with dead baby bodies)
A
doll slumped behind the door. (Limp as can be)
So
she lugged a chair behind (To kill the baby)
(She
went to) the garage to sit out the (screams)
children
(were napping forever in peace)
Sometimes
there were things to watch--
the
pinch(ing sound of the crickets)
a
floating maple leaf( that id silently watch, creepin’)
Other
days she stared until she (was ready for another kill)
was
assured when she close, ( she’s spear another kid)
her
eyes she'd only see her own (in the eyes of a child)
(with)vivid
blood.(dripping off her face, her expression was so mild)
She
had an hour, at best, (to hide the decomposing body)
before
(the po)Liza appeared pouting from (the Audi)
(from)
the top of the stairs.(i threw the body, oozing)
And
just what was mother doing
out
back (chopping up ) the field mice?
Why,
building a palace.(of dead corpses)
Later
that night when Thomas
rolled
over and lurched into her,
She
would open her eyes
and
think of the place that was hers
for
an hour--where she was nothing,
pure
nothing, in the middle of the day
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
i carry your heart
with me(i carry it in
a jar)i am never
without it(anywhere
i go you go,my
dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your
doing, my darling)
i
fear
my fate(for yours
shall soon be mine ,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful
you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are
whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a scream
will sound is you
here is the deepest
secret nobody knows
(here is the root of
the evil and the bud of your death
and the sky of my
insanity and the shadow of a tree called hell;
overtaking the mind
and soul)
and this is the terror
that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i
carry it in a jar)
WHAT HAPPENS TO A BODY by Langston Hughes
What
happens to a body?
Does
it dry up
Like
a raisin in the sun?
Or
blister like a sore--
And
then run?
Does
it stink like rotting meat?
Or
ooze and leak all over--
like
a red syrupy sweet?
Maybe
it just sags
like
a heavy load in a big plastic bag.
What will happen to this body?
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
And put his fists on my blueblack face,
then with cracked hands that ached and bleed
from labor in the weekday fields made
banked fires blaze. No one ever crossed him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, chilling,
breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise with dread,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out my mother
and punished my good soul as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of
anger and its lonely offices?
The Dead and All
By William Carlos Williams
By the road to the cemetery
under the surge of the
darkened sky
mottled clouds driven from
the
northeast—a cold wind.
Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy
fields
brown with dried weeds,
standing and fallen
feeling eyes on the back of
my head
watching my every step
All along the path the gray
dirty headstones,
bushes and small trees
block my vision
with dead, brown leaves
under them
leafless vines—
Lifeless in appearance, a
man
with hollowed eyes
approaches
More follow behind
They all appear
cold, certain of imminent
death
All about them
the cold, familiar
lifelessness
Now I’m running, from these
creatures
their stiff limbs after me
My heartbeat It quickens:
adrenaline coursing through
my veins
But now the stark outlines
of
others- coming towards me
from all directions: rooted
they
from the ground and begin
to awaken
“Revenge of
the Devils” Rites of Passage – Sharon Olds
As the monsters arrive at my beast’s
party
They gather in the dingy living room—
short devils, devils in first grade
with angled jaws and sharp chins.
Hands in pockets, they stand around
aggressively
5
jostling, battling for place, small fights
commence. One asserts to another
How old are you? Six. I’m seven. So?
They eye each other, seeing the fear
in the other’s pupils. They clear their
10
throats a lot, a room of devious
devils,
they fold their arms and gowl. I
could beat you
up, a seven says to a six,
the dark cake, round and heavy as a
turret, behind them on the table. My
beast, 15
hair black as a raven, and ravage like
a wild animal,
he acted as if he belonged in a asylum,
long nails
sharp and serrated,
speaks up as the ringleader
20
for the sake of the group.
We could easily kill a two-year-old,
he says in his dark, gruff voice. The
other
men agree, they clear their throats
like Generals, they tranquilize and get
down to 25
playing war,
glorifying my beast’s life.
SONNET 13
Shall I compare thee to an autumn's night?
Thou art more dark and more chilling:
Rough winds do shake the crisp leaves of October,
And autumn's lease hath all too long a night:
Sometime too frigid in the eye of hell,
And often is his dark complexion dimm'd;
And every dull from dull sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal autumn will not gleam
Nor lose possession of that dull thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death be stopped,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
So long as men don’t breathe or eyes can’t see,
So long lives death,
and death gives life to thee.
Death and All
By William Carlos Williams
By the road to Hell
under the Watch of the The
Devil himself
driven from the
The Gates of hell. Beyond,
the
Streams of blood ,
Fiery fields
with dried and rotting sinners, Patches
of stagnatic Dried blood
With the scattering of
Limb.
All along the road the
Blackish
Charred bodies hang from
small Dying
trees
Lifeless Shells of what
once was appear, sluggish
dazed as they approach—
They enter the The end, of the beginning
cold, uncertain of all
that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind—
Now the Dead grass and
Dirt, tomorrow
the stiff Piercing feeling
of Knives.
One by one objects are
defined—
It quickens: clarity,
outline of bodies
But now the stark outline
of a setting sun of
the entrance—Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted
they
grip down and begin to
awaken to their sins
