Oh, Responsibility

        Today we started off class with high emotions. Yes, I am talking about the senior house being taken away and the general outrage it has stirred up in the class of 2016. So we were given the poem “Responsibility” which some say was a ‘coincidence,’ but I’m sure was carefully selected by Ms. Lemon just for our mood.

        Responsibility. What does that word even mean? According to Google, responsibility is the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or having control over someone, the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something, and the opportunity or ability to act independently and make decisions without authorization. Oh, how ironic the definition of responsibility seems now. The speaker in this poem talks about the role and responsibilities of a poet.  She writes about how poets need to speak the truth about both the beautiful and the ugly. A reoccurring responsibility is, “It is the responsibility for the poet to be a woman.” I thought this was interesting because she mentions it in the second line, in the thirteenth and fourteenth line saying both males and females need to be women, and in the thirtieth line. I really liked how she said, “it is the responsibility of the male poet to be a woman,” but I was expecting her to follow up with a line like “it is the responsibility of the female poet to be a man.” It was then surprising that she continued with the theme of a woman being a woman. It makes me wonder, who is she speaking to?  Is she writing to herself as a reminder of her responsibilities as a poet? Or is she writing to other women to stay true to themselves and not try to be like men? I still can’t decide on the answer to these questions, but I suppose these responsibilities are supposed to be taken in a way that is most beneficial to the reader.      

        That may be why that, after reading this poem, we were given the assignment of writing our own “Responsibility” poems in this same style. I think the majority of people’s minds went to the before mentioned topic of outrage. However small this may be in the grand scheme of things, my mind went right there too. But it also went to a more recent event of two flies that we saw the dramatic deaths of. So, even though this is by far not my best piece of writing, I thought I would share my “Responsibility” poem.

Responsibility

It is the responsibility of the fly to be a fly

It is the responsibility for the fly to

come into peaceful classrooms

and create chaos where there was none

It is the responsibility of the fly to

find that one banana

and punish the room with its buzzing

It is the responsibility of the fly to

stir up a crowd

even if they believe in its right to live too

It is the responsibility of the fly

to bond people in anger

and not in love

It is the responsibility of the fly

to evade capture

And it is the responsibility of the people

to just let it go.