Matt Lopez
First Period
Ms. Holland
Honors English II B
“I Love to Live”
We have been friends together in sunshine and in shade,
We have been sad together, we have wept, with bitter tears,
The rhythm in liquid strides of certain looks,
I keep on dying, because I love to live.
I could not bring my passions from a common spring,
Then the gun let out its thunder, the bird descended struck with wonder.
What made today is concordant, transforms the brief decisive phase we call fear,
I keep on dying, because I love to live.
The waste of my love goes on this way trying to save you from yourself,
Gone forever, like the girls I never kissed, and the places I never visited—the lost lives I never lived,
The dream that comes, the wish that goes, the memories that follow,
I keep on dying, because I love to live.
Yes; and in death, as life, unblessed, even ashes of lovers find no rest,
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear,
Our love is not the short courtly kind but upstream, down, long inside,
I keep on dying, because I love to live.
This poem was constructed together in thanks to the following poets:
Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton, Maya Angelou, William Ernest Henley, Quincy Troupe, Louis Simpson, Barriss Mills, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert P. Tristram Coffin, Ben Johnson, Theodore Roethke, & Karen Chase.
“M.J., the Silent Assassin”
The assassin took flight,
Vicious, and full of plight, he
Attacked the hoop with two hands,
Ripping the rim, right into the stands.
The only problem was, after he took flight,
he never landed.
To him the ball felt like a ripe pumpkin,
The seams with its graceful canyons,
Smells of the gravel, straight from the blacktop.
Seeing the ball, with all its beauty,
Sounds not like any ball, yet doesn’t taste
Right after it’s bounced off your face.
Amidst his flight, soaring through the air,
He kissed the bright light, the beginning of his journey.
Michael Jordan, a man born in Brooklyn,
Eventually landed, as he never even took flight.
In his years living in North Carolina,
He was just an average nucca,
A hard worker that didn’t make it
On varsity his sophomore year.
Years later, named his Airness,
Spike asked, “Is it the shoes Mike?”
Then he replied with a simple, “Na.”
Reflecting on the fresh new kicks
Of his Airness brought discussion
That multiplied into a big repercussion.
Playin in the game, doin what he do,
M.J. stepped back and hit a game winning three?
Please! Freshy, or that white boy Matt,
Can do that, like the Cat in the Hat.
He is taking it to the hole, shaking and baking,
Right to left faking, as everyone is for goodness saking,
he takes it to the big round hole, with no fear,
Making an icy look when he flies through the air.
The crowd screams pleading me to stop,
While the women in crowd look amazed,
And yell, “Hay Papi!”
Walking back down court, the blacktop whispers,
Better yet congratulates, on the business that I’ve
Done-- as I definitely don’t do the business of a nun.
The assassin took flight,
Vicious, and full of plight, he
Attacked the hoop with two hands,
Ripping the rim, right into the stands,
In which he created a new revolution of fans.
