Hamlet, Morality, and the Psyche of a Serial Killer
Hamlet, Morality, and the Psyche of a Serial Killer
what if God is a hard marker who wears an ego
like Mr. Dunn, my 7th grade math teacher
wore his Elvis sideburns?
what is the value of pi?
please show your work
Hamlet was self-centered and always jumped
to the wrong conclusion
poker wasn’t his game
in 10th grade you broke the heart
of a freckle-faced redheaded baton twirler
incompatibility or small breasts?
explain your answer
dear Laertes
avoid all women with emotional problems
except your sister, then teach her to swim
mix the large spoons with the small ones
in the green flatware organizer and maybe you end up in hell
provide a rationale for your non-conformity
Horatio should have chosen better friends.
when tempted i simply walk away
avoiding the luscious worms in the wet grass or in bio lab
in or out of drag
we are all someone’s sister
Le Hinton
this is good mostly. tastes like the difficult amazing drudgery and slavery of teen years but then it doesn’t. i wished it stayed there and didn’t shift gears (years?) so much. actually, come to think of it, this lacks a certain cohesiveness. its sort of like a bunch of phrases written on slips of paper and pulled randomly from a faded felt hat that smells like fresh sex and mothballs.
best parts:
“…in 10th grade you broke the heart
of a freckle-faced redheaded baton twirler
incompatibility or small breasts?
explain your answer…”
and
“…mix the large spoons with the small ones
in the green flatware organizer and maybe you end up in hell…”
and
“…in or out of drag
we are all someone’s sister…”
Still,…perhaps a prime example of ‘poetry as enigma’. Changing gears/randomness is not always bad–in some cases, i think, it provides for more spontaneous be-bop prosody and stream of consciousness… This poem as it relates to the title is intriguing. Hamlet/Morality (itself)/and a Serial Killer’s Psyche all connote tragedy, it would seem, so there definetly is a burden on the reader to grovellingly grasp multi-levels of the ‘play-out’/relationship of symbols in this poem. I really liked that 1st sentence which begins the poem with a question: “what if God is a hard marker who wears an ego like Mr. Dunn, my 7th grade teacher wore his Elvis sideburns?” …And I truly was overjoyed to find those imperative (command) statements which are so rare in today’s poetry: …”please show your work”…”explain your answer”…”provide a rationale for your non-conformity”. Maybe it’s not a masterpiece of ‘flow’, but I appreciated the images and collation of several topics into one holistic microcosm…