I've ment someone who skated and wrote poems before, up in Maine. When I was going to school, I doubt it, but I wonder could that be you. She also was angeered by the refrence of being like Avril. That aside I do like this poem if that what you'd like to call it. Maybe more like a quick shoot of your mind set at the time. Maybe something longer about how it feels to be alone, without anyone to fill some of that emptiness inside.

"Drowned it to bed of nightmares" needs a comma, an article, or an adjective. Otherwise, Amusing. -9-

Fuck yeah!

Almost forgot to tell you. The old man is very ill.

D. as for as your poem reads why should I do you like that? When my ancestors would'nt do you like that? Some of the comments that were made to you. Some people don't understand that all black people don't feel the same about the past.Our father jroday taught us to look at the past in a positive way, and what I mean by that is look at what our ancestors had to go through so we could have the future that we have today. and don't go out there in the world acting like the world owe you something because you're black. -10-

D. I enjoyed reading your poem. I was reading some of your comments, and the way I feel is people need to be open minded about the past if they think that this poem will break up our friendship. Then they don't know me very well-10-

You can't be amidst a mind. You can be amidst minds, or amidst the wrinkly lobes of a brain. PS-congratulations on staging the return of napkins to poemranker. It's been a while. -10-

You're wrong. Dogs do love humans. They've evolved to love humans. They evolved that way because the pack-behavior and imprinting that help them find food and fend off predators in the wild reacts well to a different-species dominant male (i.e., a human owner). Jared Diamond writes extensively on the topic in Guns, Germs, and Steel, before going on to discuss how zebras, though pack-oriented, have never been successfully domesticated. Nor even very well tamed, except by the eccentric Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, who once rode a zebra-driven cart into Buckingham Palace (http://www.nhm.ac.uk/museum/tring/history/history.html) PS-I propose you think dogs don't really love humans because they have reasons for loving us, while you expect love to be somehow, I don't know, unconditional and profitless for the lover. That's just crazy.

You don't have more than a middle-schooler's familiarity with poetry, do you?

This is among the top, oh, five most disastrous things you've ever written. Some questions: 1) What "freedom", "authority" and "power"? Oh, you mean the Black President. Or maybe you mean for the oppressed in your poem to be Middle-aged white women, and the oppressed group men who would be secretaries but (until recently) were denied the opportunity. 2) Are you being ironic? 3) Do you know? 4) If you are, do you really mean the exact opposite (like ironists tend to do)? 5) Have you ever read Margaret Atwood's short story "Rape Fantasies"? You should. 6) Do you think you can still be friends with al-naafiiysh, blacksoul, and jroday after this? 7) No vote.

A startling shake of the blubber.

please, at least make it clear what you are getting at, so that if your only goal is to sound nice, people will know it.

The first five lines are good, but then it wanders in bad grammar: (you lips are chapped) and (milk for you drink) The last line is only vaguely supported.

Then it's not perfection, is it?