To celebrate Halloween--
and to work on how word choice affects mood and tone--students wrote "creepy translations" of original, published poems. Check on these horrifying versions of
Dream Deferred, Sonnet 18, Spring and All, and more!
DON'T TAKE EITHER ROAD
TWO roads
diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry
I could not make it
And as I
stare into the void, long I stood
And looked
down as far as I could
To where
they lurk in the shadows;
Then took
the other, bright and cheery,
And having
perhaps the better claim,
Because it
was grassy and wanted wear;
But had a
false sense of welcoming
That was
bringing me closer and closer
And both
that morning equally lay
In leaves
no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept
the first for another day!
Hearing
the voices and seeing the sights
The yellow
wood transforming at night
I shall be
telling this with a warning
Somewhere
ages and ages hence:
Two roads
diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the
one less traveled by,
And that
has made all the difference
How to Eat a Poem by Eve Merriam
Don't be polite.
Bite into his flesh.
Pick him up with your fingers and lick the red
juice that
may run down your chin.
He is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.
You do not need a knife or fork or spoon
or plate or napkin or tablecloth.
For there is no core
or arm
or leg
or heart
or organ
or skin
to throw
away.
One Death
BY ELIZABETH BISHOP
The art of killing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be killed that their loss is no disaster.
Kill someone every
day. Accept the fluster
of lost friends, the hour well spent.
The art of killing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice killing farther, killing faster:
strangers, and families, and who it was you meant
to travel with. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved siblings went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two friends, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two dogs, a cat.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Dead Body
What happens to a dead body?
Does it dry up in the sun?
Or fester like a sore?
Is the culprit on the
run?
Does it stink like rotten
meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
A Zombie’s Guide
Don't be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and lick the blood that
may run down your chin.
Bite into the flesh of the most delicious one
They are ready and ripe now, whenever you are.
You do not need a knife or fork or spoon
or plate or napkin or tablecloth.
For there is no sympathy
for their feelings
or family or friends
or heart
or insides
or hands
or skin.
All that matters is your hunger.
Satisfy it.
The Devil Will Know
Rain will fall again
on your smooth paved tomb
a light breeze like
Your last breath of air
The breeze and the dawn
will diminish again
when you return from the underworld,
as if beneath your step.
Between bones and blood
the demons will know.
There will be other days,
there will be other voices.
You will scream alone.
The demons will know.
You will hear chants
old and powerful and demonic
like the dead left over
from yesterday’s sacrifice
You too will make signals
You’ll answer with beggs
Followed with laughter
you too will die
The demons will know.
and the light rain
and the dried blood
that belongs to the heart of the devil
who hopes no more of you—
Welcoming you with a sadistic
smile
As yours turns upside down
There will be other days,
other voices and chants.
At the end of 666 minutes,
You will suffer for eternity
DaysEnd
She wanted a little room for
thinking:
but she saw skins steaming
on the line,
A doll slumped behind the door.
So she lugged a chair behind
the garage to sit out the
children's endless naps
Sometimes there were other things to watch--
the pinched armor of a vanished cricket,
a floating maple leaf.
Other days she stared until she
was assured when she closed
her eyes she'd only see her
children’s blood.
She had an hour, at best,
before Liza appeared pouting from
the top of the stairs.
And just what was mother doing
out back with the field mice?
Why, only, tying a knot.
A very special knot.
Later that night when Thomas
rolled over and lurched into her,
the rope fit perfectly.
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
SONNET 18
Shall I compare thee to a horror film?
Thou mysterious and bone tingingling:
A figure stalking, waiting, and ready to scare
And autumn’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too cold the eye of hell lingers,
Possessed, psycho, and unforgiving ;
And victim to victim will scourge in pain,
By chance, or to escape;
But thy eternal autumn will stay
Nor gain possession ;
Death shall encounter thou’s soul,
When in all eternity this is fate;
The figure will always continue to torture thou
victims,
So long
lives this, and no life to thee
The first victim
By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
[lies a densely acquainted graveyard]
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast—a cold wind. [bellow over it]
Beyond, the waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
patches of standing water
[a man mourns his wife]
the scattering of tall trees
All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines—[with the life sucked out of them]
Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches—
[the zombie hand breaks the silence]
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind—
Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined—
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
[it has started]
But now the stark dignity of
entrance—Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and [they] begin to awaken
[the man makes no attempt to escape]
[he accepts his new fat, he wants it]
[the zombies swarm him like bees]
[he is the first victim.]
Eating:
I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, children
to eat them for breakfast,
the hairs very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of cannibalism; and as I stand among them
lifting the limbs to my mouth, the ripest ones
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like squeezed and squinched,
many-lettered, cyst-like lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of cannibalism in late September.
