Jeremy's+page


 * These poems all include the theme pain emotionally and/or physically.

Ballad of Birmingham** "Mother dear, may I go downtown Instead of out to play, And march the streets of Birmingham In a @Freedom March today?" "No, baby, no, you may not go, For the dogs are fierce and wild, And clubs and hoses, guns and jails Aren't good for a little child." "But, mother, I won't be alone. Other children will go with me, And march the streets of Birmingham To make our country free ." "No, baby, no, you may not go, For I fear those guns will fire. But you may go to church instead And sing in the children's choir." She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair, And bathed rose petal sweet, And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands, And white shoes on her feet. The mother smiled to know that her child Was in the sacred place, But that smile was the last smile To come upon her face. For when she heard the explosion, Her eyes grew wet and wild. She raced through the streets of Birmingham Calling for her child. She clawed through bits of glass and brick , Then lifted out a shoe. "O, here's the shoe my baby wore, But, baby, where are you?"

//By Dudley Randall//

The old woman across the way is whipping the boy again and shouting to the neighborhood her goodness and his wrongs.
 * The Whipping**

Wildly he crashes through elephant ears, pleads in dusty zinnias , while she in spite of crippling fat pursues and corners him.

She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling boy till the stick breaks in her hand. His tears are rainy weather to woundlike memories:

My head gripped in bony [|vise] of knees, the [|writhing] struggle to wrench free, the blows, the fear worse than blows that hateful

Words could bring, the face that I no longer knew or loved. . . Well, it is over now, it is over, and the boy sobs in his room,

And the woman leans muttering against a tree, exhausted, purged-- avenged in part for lifelong hidings she has had to bear.

//By Robert Hayden//

 **Those Winter Sundays** Sundays too my father got up early And put his clothes on in the blueback cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices? //By Robert Hayden//  Unwrapped Presents that burn so bright yet the arms are so very empty as passion burns within given to no one
 * the heart is full flames

these secret gifts i hold within my soul with no one to give then to presents yet unwraped

come the break of day i go to my bed my darkened room that protects me from the glare of the sun

i crawl in my bed between my sheets and lay alone and think

though there is no protection from the emptiness i feel my life spins before me circles of work ,sleep and all alone

i sing songs to no one i dream of something more , as i head out to the nite time i look back at the door

my home, my heart all there and waiting for the one some day who will fill this vampyress heart with love and end these lonely days ||

All my poems share a sense of pain. The pain may be physical or mental but it is still pain. Pain can be caused by torture, phycological torture, loss, loneliness, heartbreak, and more. Sometimes the pain will go away and other times it won't. The first two poems both have a type of physical and mental pain. The third and forth poem talk a lot about loneliness. I think that the poem that spoke the most to me was the last one, "//Unwrapped Presents."// I think it had the most effect on me because it feels the most realistic to me and I understood what it was saying. The theme of pain was evident in each poem because the all had a sense of sadness. Sadness is a type of pain that can range from a low of losing a game to depression.