Persona Poems : "Before you Wet the Ink"

Writing from a view point other than one's own .

• From the Battle of Leipzig, 1813
  
  
  October wind
  blocked by this uniform,
  a war’s apron, the patchwork
  and bandages are tearing away.
   I am following the brigandage
  battling into France
  and barricades falter away.
  Other soldier men
  backbones of campaigns
  become undone and their beckoning
  fades away. The
  end, the celebration bades
  a necessary exile.
  I am a battler.
  Who will never visit
  Elba island
  across the Mediterranean.
  Yet, I
  wave goodbye as I hear
  and break into
  a grin that spreads an arm’s length wide
  all because
  Napolean is sent away there.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Some A Time (1-5)

           H.C. Modaff

(First) I remember when paper calendars hung upon tacks that got pressed into plaster with pointer fingers and thumbs & when the months turned with a swoosh of paper noise (Second) on a cold St. Valentine’s Day,  my Betty Grabel and Catwoman warped into one took me to 

Niagara Falls, NY 

in her Subaru Outback the color of stew. When we checked in to the Seneca Hotel, concierges waved us on, housekeepers knocked on door like Stanley Roper and both of us declined the touristy tours & walked along worn trails in Hyde Park. (Third) In the mornings, I stared directly into her eyeglasses like the faces from the House of Wax did & (Fourth) on our trip back we saw a funeral procession go by waving American flags. And while we drove back home to Ann Arbor, Michigan with steaming cappuccinos in our cup holders she used a (Fifth) GPS signal on the dashboard. 

& As soon as I returned my mother still wearing her hair in curlers dug at  me asking, “Did you propose?”

Not yet, I replied as vulnerable as the barrel from that movie with Marilyn Monroe.

• Here's an example from 2009, when I wrote from a Classic Mustang's voice.

Before you Wet the Ink

Anna G. Moore

I wasn’t pedastled in

a one-car garage for 41 years

and turtle-waxed mirrored

weekly, to be weened from premium octane

and paralled against

spilled-hell, Maple-treed concrete

on Bratley Lane

while pretend

playboy woos an opaque minded minx,

who yesterweek left a wet trademark

on my unwelcoming cheek

 while

Smokescreen pointed me towards a double

I-almost-lost-my-tune-up feature

and branded me with a stereo-type speaker;

I won’t be pigeonholed

 by Mrs. O’Toole’s drivers-ed flunkee

turn

blank-check-heir;

could charade upon my bumpertails,

alter hand-me-down

to a red-light district,

and forget to turn off my own precinct

to recharge me with stenched

testosterone while making Grease-

lightning faces in my

own showroom; vrooms a pistachio-shell

even where Doughboy can’t reach

checker-pawn torpor red-ribbon

horsepower for a fantasy parade.

I’ll take driveway death,

become junkyard renegade,

before I’m willed to

a pimple-faced pubescent’s

masquerade.

I'm going to post my most recent Persona poems from Amy England's class later.