Improv/Imitation Piece Entry 1 (Week 4)

So, Professor Davidson mentioned a piece by Frank O'Hara in class entitled "The Day Lady Died" while we were working on our litanies. Well, I really liked the first few lines:

"It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton   

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun   

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets   

in Ghana are doing these days" 

and I wanted to take a stab at imitating them using life in Roswell, instead of New York City.

Its 3:40 in Roswell a Friday

the day of the rivalry game, yes

its Milton and Roswell, 2011 and we stampede into Taco Mac

because we get the 20% discount for students and are on time for 6:30 tailgating in the parking lot

and 7:00 kickoff, where up in the stands flour is thrown and no one pays attention to the game

only the drum line and no one cares about the score until the very end

I swim upstream against the angry mob of hormonal teens

and scour the stadium for my sister and her friend and buy

a overpriced Dasani water to support the PTA

in whatever unnecessary fundraiser they try to support these days.

Let me know what you think.

I loved the structure of his poem, but wanted to include the fundamentals we talked about in class.