Poetry Festival will be held:

Saturday, April 27, 2024

2018 Winner

A Love Song for the Others:
On T.S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Do not let your hair grow gray with questions.

With mud on your sleeves and elbows scraped to the bone

fill your mind with answers.

Give notice to the fog and breathe it in yellow.

 

What good is an unopened window?

 

There is time, there is t–

My face is prepared and has glanced through window panes.

I’ve killed my time and created times.

At one point, long ago

I screamed there will be time,

time for unity and time for division

but no time for indecision.

 

At first, inside, I know not who I am.

From outside, I watch the women enter the room; I am Michelangelo.

 

I dare

I dare

I dare use time and disturb this universe

No minutes

No seconds

Only an instant to know that which I do not.

I wake in the morning to know the morning.

No sunrise is familiar.

I say, “Goodmorning”

but a sunrise does not know if the morning is good,

for it has not seen morning.

So far removed,

the sun rises with someone else’s coffee spoon,

not mine.

I look into the eye of the universe and

I dare.

 

I’ve drunk from cups some sweet and bitter teas.

Halls of used napkins have a graveyard to themselves.

I’ve tossed out coins

Yes, sometimes foolishly, but other times not.

 

I’ve sprawled myself on a pin and wriggled off the wall.

I’ve already begun to muddy my shoes and have taken many, many falls.

My claws have scraped the sand of seas tirelessly

and worn themselves into nothing more than rounded edges

filled with a substance I can call my own.

 

My hair is thick, my muscles toned.

Why should I wait until I’m old and grown?

To round off my spears or

jump into colder water,

To eat a peach and walk with white trousers on the beach.

To put my fist up and hail my alma mater.

 

I’ve had doubts on whether to play,

Instead I started my scene.

I finally understood what it meant to be the answer to my own question.

I had a good day.

No,

the day is not mine. I live by its code

even if that means I have to grow old.

 

I do not hear the mermaids yet, no two sing together.

If my course remains west, my sun will not set.

I have time, I have time

to lie under the starry sky for my eternal rest.

But now,

now I go,

as my soul follows my shoes.

 

I watch the women enter the room; I am Michelangelo.

 

I sing, I sing, I am immune

but I cannot sing a song I do not know.

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Aaron Douoguih

Gonzaga College High School

Grade: 12

Hometown:

Chevy Chase

Birthplace:

Baltimore, MD

Favorite Author or Book:

F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, and Miyamoto Musashi

Dream for the Future:

Writer/Musician

Inspirational Figure:

My grandpa, Gus