October 26: A Composition, Christmas Essay, Old Poem, New Cartoon

...Anyway, finally I had to come right out and tell him that I had to write a composition for Stradlater, and that he had to clear the hell out, so I could concentrate.  He finally did, but he took his time about it, as usual.  After he left, I put on my pajamas and bathrobe and my old hunting hat, and started writing the composition.

One the few things Holden does well is writing.  He's good at English.  Of course, as I've said before, it runs in his family.  His older brother, D. B., is a professional writer.  His brother, Allie, wrote poems all over his baseball glove.  The only subject Holden isn't flunking at Pencey Prep is English.  That's why Holden's roommate, Stradlater, asks Holden to write an essay for him.

I have an essay to work on this weekend.  A Christmas essay.  I do it every year.  The local Public Radio station puts out a call for people to record Christmas writings for the holiday season every year.  I just got that call yesterday.  I've already started writing it.  I need to simply get it done.  Soon.

Therefore, kind Saint Marty disciple, I will not be writing a new poem this weekend for your reading pleasure.  Instead, this post contains an old poem.  Hopefully, it's one you haven't read before.  I have to work on my Christmas essay.  The clock is ticking, the deadline looming.

Saint Marty has to get in a yuletide frame of mind.

Metamorphoses

I want to speak about bodies
Changed into new forms.
My daughter, ten, on the verge
Of petal, stigma, ovule, sepal,
Talks of All Hallow's Eve, the form
She will assume when Selene
Rises into the starry heavens.
Talks of the living dead, hunger
For the taste of flesh, of body.
Then changes her mind.
She will be straw in cornfield,
Blight against crow feather.
Then she chooses
A fairy nymph of cobweb,
Draped in lace and silk,
Arachne's fine handiwork,
Fat with flies and moth wing.
Her muse shifts yet again.
She will be spell caster.
Pointed hat, frog skin,
Green and marbled with the dark
Matter of the universe.  And now,
Her final mutation, she will be
A girl, red-cloaked, a penchant
For forest and hairy stranger
In her young breast.  I fear
This form most.  Fear she won't
Want to morph back on All Soul's Day.
Fear she will just keep changing
States.  Liquid.  Solid.  Vapor.
Until she drifts away from me,
Or becomes some creature I don't know
How to love.


Confessions of Saint Marty