Exploration #44/part 1 (July 2012)

The following series of poems with the seemingly random titles stem from this particular exploration task I decided to try out after El gave me this book: How To Be an Explorer of the World- portable life museum by Keri Smith. Just thought I would try it out for fun!

(p.s: thanks el for that interesting book! I really liked it!:D)

EXPLORATION #44
...ALTERNATE: CREATE POEMS
BASED ON THE TITLE OF BOOKS

The 5 titles of books that I came across at the Serangoon Public Library:

1. Beethoven was one-sixteenth black and other stories by Nadine Gordimer

2.No Time to Cry by Lurlene McDaniel

3. Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen

4. Alphabet Soup by Johnson Tammy

5. The Big Push by Erika Wittekind

***

Beethoven was one-sixteenth black

She said

"once upon a time

blacks wanted to be white

and now

whites want to be black

it's the same secret"

We yearn to be

the people we are not

live the life we have never lived

"Beethoven was one-sixteenth black"

so the radio announced

If he knew what jazz was like

would he be all fired up

angry even

because he was one-sixteenth black

and never got to live with jazz?

I was born in the wrong time-

was there ever a right time for

existence and

non-existence?

Is being one-sixteenth black

the key to deafness and thus

greatness?

We yearn to be

the people we are not

live the life we have never lived.

"It's the same secret."