Improv 2, Week 6

The second improv for this week is a riff of John Poch's 'The Cross.'

You can make one with your fingers,
your hands, your howle body.
A common tattoo.
A corkscrew gone through itself,
away from the wine and into the hand.
The simplest arm of a broken snowflake.
Pure outdoor torture furniture.
A Roman invention, but more important-a human invention.
Sexy on a rock star's throat.
Does it make you mad? angry? cross?
Don't cross me.
Don't cross your eye. They'll stay that way.
Cross yourself. Stay that way.
Cross your heart? Hope to die?
A rose staked up, throns and blooming all over. All over.
A wet but drying double-crested cormorant hangs across the air.
Mortal support.
The new mtah.
For instance, time's crossroads times zero equals infinity.
A plus.
Death's Leer jet, seen from belos.
A God's-eye view of a rush-hour inetersection, crawling.
An old phone pole, calling.
Two high beams comng at you, blinding you.
The X of a kiss, turned a little tighter.
The X of murder turned a little tighter.
The X of buried treasure, found, turned a little tighter.
A lower case t, sans serif, sans seraphim.
The word torture has two t's.
This poem has exactly one hundred t's, all crossed.
Do you wish to cross-examine?
To a tee? To a tree?
Excruciatingly double crossed.
A million potential splinters.
The scarecrow that works forever.
Someone waits on a hill in silhouette.

The unique construct of this poem comes by taking an image seen in every day society and actually pointing out the instances in which that image has some element of face value, or is at least deemed as signficiant. In life things are passed over easily, so the 'one-hundred crossed t's' in this thirty-six line poem shows exactly how often the image of the cross can pass by us without us subconsciously noticing (whether it's physically or just in language and ideals). I wanted to portray this same meaning with a different symbol, so my second improv poem for this week reflects ths shape of a square.

The Square

It is birthed from two mirroring L’s
folded together upward,
forming a block of silk.
You can make one with your hands.
It outlines the Windows of our present
virtual reality, mocking the original
screen-saver. Its televized frame
seals our mind–impenetrable
like the aphrodisiac box inflamed
by the mimes warping our vision
into a cotton-candy-swirled mass.
It is the center of New-York- Times
the four timed name of a child’s
favorite game. Flatten the simplest
3-D shape upon on a 2-D landscape.
Second grade’s legendary trick:
An artist's true secret revealed.
Enemies square off against each other.
Four corners piercing in a synchronized turn:
Four lines, four sides, four angles of chance
for Contestants to beat the sphinx
with the right celebs.
Checker and Chess pieces walk its path to victory:
It is the strongest building block upon
which we learn our ABC's and 123's and
spelling with the keys’ board
where we digitize-US.
Squandered off of ‘squire,’
just one letter shy of transmogrification.
Dentist tiles always counted and forgotten
while reminding us to call that hairdresser
for Saturday’s dreaded engagement.
It is what makes the rubiks cube
so frustratingly retro. And you must glance
just there
to preserve a moment everlasting.
The populars deem it as nerdy.
Yet, it has its own hit song:
It’s hip to be
L-7
Square your hips when you dance.