A poem for my AP language and composition class

Abstruse Oblivion

 

1  My mind roams free

2  Every night,

3  On an adventure,

4  Through the tumult of silence.

5  Everything is loud; everything is silent.

6  My mind out to all of the memories

7  Of the long hard day.

8  All is calm; all is wild.

9  My mind dregs

10  Through the past

11  Reminiscing bittersweet days

12  And mourning the ones wished forgotten.

13  Away slips my mind and my consciousness,

14  Reaching with open arms to the Almighty 

15  And deep down to embrace Lucifer.

16  My mind then forgets

17  The eyes, the ears

18  And sees and listens with the heart. 

19  In this prison

20  I find freedom

21  From everything

22  And from myself.

Self Analysis

Line 3/12:            Personification- “The mind” is said to “roam free.” Minds don’t actually get up and walk around. Minds also don’t mourn, technically.

Line 4:                   Oxymoron- Tumult is defined as disorder or an outbreak of disorder, which contradicts the word describing it, “silence.

Line 5/8:               Parallelism- Everything/all is _______; everything/all is _________ = similar structure

Line 11:                 Paradox- The word bittersweet contradicts itself, but is accurate.

Line 13:                 Zeugma- “Away slips my mind” and “away slips my consciousness” produce different meanings. The latter intends to create the picture of falling asleep and the former illustrates dreaming or the like.

Line 13:                 Inversion- Most would normally say “my mind slips away” or “my consciousness slips away.”

Line 14/15:          Allusion- “The Almighty” refers to God and “Lucifer” is Satan, in case you didn’t know. Referring to God brings to mind heaven and good things, so the mind thinks of good things. Mentioning Satan refers to hell, and thus bad things, and one might make the connection that the mind thinks of bad things.

Line 17:                 Metonymy- By looking at line 18, one can tell that “the eyes” refers to sight and “the ears” refers to hearing

Line 3/9/16:        Anaphora- While not in succession, the repetition of the phrase “my mind” should be evident.  Every other sentence begins with the phrase, emphasizing the subject, the narrator’s mind.

 

Have you ever had an overwhelming desire to learn about the deficit?

Yeah, I don't think I have either. But once my father decides he's going to tell you something, you sit down, shut up, and listen. 

Today's topic was the deficit. It was fairly short too, so hopefully you'll come away from this somewhat more enlightened and not bored to tears. 

He explained it like this:

Imagine you're a working person. You're on your own, have a steady income. But, you're spending $350 more than you're earning. And you've been doing so for the last three months. 

This month, you realize, "crap! I've been spending too much!" 

So what do you do? You budget. You look at what you've been spending and decide what you can cut out. 
 
You look through your purchases and stuff and you realize that once a week you've been eating at McDonalds for breakfast. Each breakfast is about $4.25. You don't really need that, and decide to cut that from your schedule.

Is your problem solved now? What? It's not? But you cut that extra McDonalds from your spending!

Oh... 4.25*4 is actually only $17. Not quite the $350 you need. Just to not overspend this month, never mind paying back the last three months' debts. 

That's a little like what the U.S. government has done. 

We've been deficit spending for at least the last 12 years. Going from an already significant debt, that makes our current debt enormous. 

In real life terms, this is what happened:

We were deficit spending. About to hit the debt ceiling (which is the maximum borrowing power of the government.) The government either needed to revise the budget or raise the debt ceiling. Democrats wanted to raise the ceiling. Republicans did not. So they said that the ceiling could be raised, if cuts were also made. 

So they put together a group of people to decide how to fix/make the budget. They had a time limit, and if they didn't decide on something before March 1, 2013, then the sequester would be enacted. This means things would get cut. Things that no one wanted to get cut.

The government said, "DON'T WORRY Y'ALL, THIS COMMITTEE WILL FIGURE THIS SHIT OUT BECAUSE NO ONE WANTS THESE CUTS." 

March 1st, guess what happened? 

Yupp. 

Those cuts. 

Did you notice?

Nope. 

Neither did I.

That's because those cuts were, as my father said, "a drop in the bucket." It was that $4.25 at McDonalds once a week.

Then he went a little into how Medicare and Medicaid were the problem, but yeah. 

There's the deficit for you. 

Feel enlightened.   

The convenience of today

Every day, we take for granted all the amazing technology we have today. I mean, just think about it.

• Heating/Cooling- We can CONTROL THE TEMPERATURE. I don't think you understand how amazing that is. Back in the olden days, you just had to hope you had a good blanket and that the fire wouldn't start your wooden house on fire tonight while you were sleeping. Now we can heat homes and even cool them. 
• Phones- We can talk to people on the other side of the world. You used to be lucky if you talked to someone from another state. And that's just with regular phones. Will cell phones, you can be anywhere, and you can talk into a little metal/plastic device and someone in downtown Chicago can hear you. Practically telepathy. You'd be burned at the stake for being a witch.
• Cars- Now cars are just ridiculous. If someone proposed cars now to the Department of Safety of the U.S., they would be rejected. I mean seriously. Giant metal contraptions we control at high speeds? And everyone has one? Too dangerous, vetoed. These even allow us to cross the country in less than a week. I It used to take around half a year just to get halfway across. 
• Lights- We have lights, that run out after weeks, months even, and they are very little risk for starting fires. In fact, we have so much light that we often can't even see the stars in big cities. Back in the day, you had to conserve any candles you had, and they were pretty poor lighting. 
• Glasses- Glasses are just amazing. We can make someone's vision perfect, even if they can't see their hand in front of their face. We are tampering with the human body, without actually touching the eyes. It's amazing how we have learned to mold some simple glass into something useful to us.
• Fireworks- Fireworks are just weird. If you think about it, what's the point? Back in ancient China, I believe they were used in war, but don't trust me, I'm just too lazy to Google it. Honestly though, we set things on fire so that they make pretty colored fire in pretty shapes. It's weird. 
• MP3 Players- We have the capabilities to listen to music, just us, in our heads. We can hear a guitar, a bass, a drumset, and a singer, all at once, without them actually being there. Once again, if you showed up with one in the olden days, you'd be burned as a witch. 
• Electric Blankets- This is a personal favorite of mine. I would die without mine. I hate the cold. I can create heat, with just electricity, just for my bed. Without this "technology," I would have to put hot water bottles under my sheets and wait for it to heat up my sheets and hope that none of them spilled. I think that's what they did in on of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books anyway.

So those are just a few of the modern miracles we have nowadays. So the next time you turn up your thermostat or text your friend, just remember: you are a witch.