Love Poems Based on The Wall Street Journal

From The Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2005

Mrs. Emily Farrell, a high school English teacher in Pennsylvania, hands each of her students an article from The Wall Street Journal. The assignment: write a love poem in which virtually every word comes from the story. Here are three examples:

I want to break away
From our chess game of love
I won't have you
Negotiate trades of my love for your shares
You have become increasingly aggressive in your control
You know, I have a market value of $50 billion
That I am not going to spin off or sell.
I have heard on the street
That your love stock for me
Has languished over the past couple of years
After 15 years of this relationship,
Working together on establishing communications,
We need to cede our game
And achieve a favorable breakup
by Erica Rosset, from "Malone Makes a Move on Murdoch."

Lounging on the sidewalk outside
the world's largest handbag store in Paris,
The sunlight floods your suit,
Your diamond earrings shoot out the sun's rays in copycat style
I train my eyes on your slender figure and search the oval face,
That launched a thousand flagship stores, hawking luxury goods
Your dark eyes, for once not obscured by sunglasses,
Grab me, and your trademark grin,
The way the skin gently wrinkles
at the corners of those brilliant white teeth
Are you real or fake? I ask this every day...
By Erika Acuña, from "Luxury-Goods Firms Hunt Copycats as Web Market Expands."

His feelings for her
Came on like a terminal illness
Hijacking every single ounce of breath
And refusing to let him go
There was no transition
But a full out attack on his heart
He felt obligated to spend the day
Down to every moment
While the thought of her
Massacres his mind
She left him
With no peace
But scares and blood
By Paul Vassilev, from "After Arafat."

UPDATE! If you take the WSJ poetry challenge and write one of your own, I will link to it. Let me know! I will try one too.

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