Site Masthead: Nick's Place in non-serif white text superimposed over a bright orange high contrast tinted photograph of a brick wall taken in an extreme close up. The brick is photographed with the long continuous lines of grout running vertically. The image is displayed upside-down so the disappearing point for the grout is below the image.

Nick's Place

Nick's Place: Untitled

Nicholas Barnard

Classical English Literature III

May, 17 1999

Written in the styles of Romantic and Victorian English poets

Page

Title

Written in the Style Of

2

Ode to a Pink Flower Shaped Pen

Percy Bysshe Shelly

3

“When I see lines”

John Keats

4

Finding the Bar

Alfred Lord Tennyson

5

Mickey D's

William Blake

6

Work

William Blake

7

The Cold War?

Mathew Arnold

8

Grandma's Dirge

Percy Bysshe Shelly

Ode to a Pink Flower Shaped Pen

O quaint Pink Pen, thou image of Sprint Fresh

Thou, from which my unseen words flow.

Are created, created, and molded out of a simple mess.

Silver, and black, and gold, and vibrant pink.

Commercial origins. O thou,

Who savest me from a dark sink.

The untapped seeds, where they lie, unused and dull

Each like, a flower in a canon, until

Romeo drags me like a stubborn bull.

His charge over the student filled pit, falls upon

Deaf and unreceptive but intelligent ears.

May finally be heard, by this awakening pawn.

Pink Pen, which art moving everywhere;

Thou is much like the: a pawn

Written in the Style of Percy Bysshe Shelly

“When I see lines”

When I see lines that I have yet to know.

Before the keys have gleaned a teeming brain,

Before lofty ideas start to grow.

I envision, what the ripe fruit will gain.

When I produce a evening's hard borne work

The minutiae problems of a great product

I think of all the work that I must shirk

To save my grade from what he will deduct

I owe it all to the little pink pen

From American Family Insurance

It is the pen designed by many men

Striving to avoid the downsized fence.

I sit and think alone in the great room

That poetry could by my next great boon

Written in the Style of John Keats

Finding the Bar

Sunrise and morning alarm

But many muddled calls for me!

May the hurdles I face cause me no harm,

When I embark on the sea.

But the drive within me seems dormant

Too busy for English and Stats,

When those who yelled and screamed take in the doormat,

And move again the mats.

Graduation and freedom bell,

After that the unknown.

And may there be no intermittent hell,

When I have flown;

For through out my path of triumphs and falls

The process may bear me far

I hope to leave these endless halls,

When I have reached the bar.

Written in the style of Alfred Lord Tennyson

Mickey D's

My mother took me there when I was very young,

And my father took me when mom couldn't come.

Could scarcely yell “`burger! `burger! `burger! `burger!”

So your food I eat and your hearing I murder

There's little Tommy up in the space ship thingy

Look there's little Billy flying like he has wingies!

Up there!, there is little Jane Cravley near the plane

Look here comes Grimace with a mane!

Here comes Daddy with the big full caddie

I grab the big colorful box, but “That's for Aunt Patty.”

I attack my boxed happy meal,

I eat my burger and search for the toy with all my zeal!

“Hurry up finish” my mommy yells

We must go or I'll miss the start of “Angels.”

So we go from my favorite place to play.

And I hope I can return another day.

Written in the style of William Blake's Songs of Innocence

Work

Mom, I've got to get to work!

“Have your dad take you I'm watching “Mork!”

I dash into the door, “Your late Nick”

My manager roars, “Clean the slide, a kid mad a big ick!”

As I run back, new directions “Run the grill,

You've got Jim on meat, Hassan on the spill,

And that guru Aaron on assembling.”

I run in, get thrown a crispy and madly apply its dressing.

My night continues like this,

A sandwich, a request, a postal employee.

That customer who I think I made pissed.

But all these things for money, I do gleefully!

Written in the style of William Blake's Songs of Experience

The Cold War?

Escalate, into the deep tunnels

Escalate, work into the funnel

Of more and more! Without End,

This cycle must break, or there will be none to defend!

Let the long contention cease!

They all yell, we want peace!

Let Them have it if they find the will.

Best be moving to avoid the still.

They talked thee, out built thee, and spit at thee!

Better Presidents have come before thee;

There quiet cautions, passed over,

If only we had stopped and read the cover.

Be silent and dormant once more, act dumb!

Let the Ruskies, think we will succumb!

When their forts of folly fall,

We will win it all!

Written in the style of Mathew Arnold

Grandma's Dirge

High ceilings, this familiar church,

Grief attached to a song;

Solemn notes from my mouth lurch

Smell of memory all night long;

Sad death, whose tear pain

Bare halls, whose emptiness strains.

Deep memories and dreary facts --

Wail, the world moves on.

Written in the style of Percy Bysshe Shelly