Triptych Edit #1

[Leah S.]

Edit #1: Oof!

Triptych

A “ten times ten” In my ignorance I can only assume "ten times ten" people studying. And a partridge in a pear tree.
study hall
    looks like
        a sushi house
  to cannibals

Academia
         All you can eat

It’s very pretty to be
sitting on the quad
eating quadriceps Cute
over a potbelly fire. What campus allows campfires on the quad?

There’s really nothing exempt from cannibalism. 'No-one', not 'nothing'. Cannibalism is a state enjoyed by cannibals, not an action performed by them. Unless you are scavenging parts from something to use for repairing a similar something. Then you could be described as "cannibalizing."

* * *

There’s a man with two contorted hands, Where did this man come from and why are his hands contorted?
wrenching light from his optical computer. Is this a contorted metaphor for seeing?
Ten ten key keyboards lashed to his sled, What sled, where? Suddenly, while straining to penetrate your imagery, I found myself in the Arctic, squinting in the glaring sun on the snow, clenching the handles of a dog-sled being pulled by ten clattering ten-key keyboards.......
he codes marionette personas to flow out,..... surrounded by little snide puppets........
to manage, curate, and patronize a little ......pushing me onward with little shoves, giving me to understand how fondly proud they are.......
joke store inside a digital tidal wave......of their quaint and adorable store, their little mom-and-pop joke store in the wavering distance, when suddenly a flood of little ones and zeroes issuing from their painted lips bowls me off my feet, capsizing my ten madly barking ten-keys, and carries us off (sled, ten-keys and all) bouncing and sparking, toward a twinkling neon storefront in the distance.
Whew!
* * *

a viper is heard By whom?
as he awakens You realize your syntax describes a wide-awake viper with night terrors, right?
from a night terror

  two steps and
  a creak in the
  balls of the feet Nice. I felt that creak.

      the hardwood floor bowing

ten by ten there's that 'ten by ten' again.
splinter lattices
underneath Underneath what? The underside of the splintery floor, or the bottom of bare feet laced with splinters? Ow.
     
      as they both dance Both? Who both? The viper and the sneaking mysterious "he" ?
      on the floor
      like vapor

I also, inexplicably, like this poem. But why?

Original:

Triptych

A “ten times ten”
study hall
    looks like
        a sushi house
  to cannibals

Academia = All you can eat

It’s all very pretty
sitting on the quad
eating a quadriceps
over a potbelly fire.

There’s really nothing exempt from cannibalism
if you think about it.

* * *

There’s a man with two wrenched hands
pulling lightning out of computers at his desk,
ten ten key keyboards lashed to his sled,
running a little joke store in a digital tidal wave.

* * *

a viper is heard

  two steps and
  a creak in the
  balls of the feet

      the hardwood floor bowing

ten by ten
splinter lattices
underneath
     
      as you both dance
      on the floor
      like vapor


-Em