Poetic Justice

The Creative Law Society

Poetic Justice

From The Poetry of Water and the Environment, a poetry slam and conversation between the Creative Law Society, the Environmental Law Society, and Justice Gregory Hobbs of the Colorado Supreme Court.

Justice Hobbs was very inspiring in his love for poetry. He read poems from Anthem, which was a Boalt literary journal was around for a few years that Hobbs edited when he was a student here. We at the Creative Law Society thought having a Boalt literary journal was a brilliant idea, and we're going to spearhead an effort to bring it back next year. Send us submissions if you're interested, and let us know if your Boalt organization would like to help co-sponsor it.

Here's the student poems from the Poetry and Water event:

No Daffodils

No daffodils
Do I remember,
But today
They happened
To tiptoe across
Our walkway,
Leaving a soft impression
Like when I slowly
Felt your knee touching
Softly my own tonight.

- Liwen Ma

Le Sucre du Printemps (The sugar of spring)

Streams of dripping sunlight
Pour through drying boughs
And water the surprised cornlilies
Just waking from slumberous Night.
Naked I wade in the dancing stream
And feel the tickling of an azure breeze-
Joy splashes through my fingers
Like some mellifluous dream...
With gardenias that kiss my nose
(Anything but common scents!)
Then float away coquettishly.
Were there ever winter snows?

- Liwen Ma

Untitled

Floating in the Pacific, not far from shore,
eating a damp macaroon, hair turning green,
the priest recalls the communion wine,
urine yellow, sweet as a bee's
tongue, the coolness of the alb,
heft of the chalice, so different
from the Baja heat and the weightless waves.

How long had he been here, eating tempeh
burgers and pancakes at the OK Cafe,
the sting of mescalin in his veins tempered
by the syrup in his throat?
Was it yesterday he flipped through Lowry's leters,
pages rumpled with coffee blots and blistering
with the brilliance of the prodigal son,
whom he wished he could be.

Sorry is a sorry word, an empty basin
waiting to be filled
by forgiveness,
which may only come with water,
with a drenching flood the sky over Mexico
refused to yield. So he lies here,
passive as a limpet, lips slack,
floating spineless out to sea.

- Katie Saral

Flow as Code

Water has its code, to flow
Everywhere it can, to go down any
Path that’s open
Without the end in mind
Enforcing rules with heavy licks on land
But light ascension into air
As we imagine souls

Water never asked the river if it would rather be a road
It told
The river
With lips of liquid suasion
You will be my way

I stand on the breakwater in winter
The whole of the ocean before me
The broken part behind
Boats traverse the border, smoothly on the broken water

Rolling on the whole

- Elizabeth Miles

Untitled

I am tired
of slicing myself
into smiles, day after
day to the same lunchmeat-
dull glow faces twisting
in our play, pretending
to know. we vomit
words like insects, a choke
of flies to fill the voided air.
stripped bare,
my onion core burns
back in my bedroom, where I sleep
alone
in the rancid
steam of my own
resentment.

- Anonymous

Untitled

Water
deep pools of.....

fathoms of rules
unwritten, leaving so much
to protect in abandoning the need

blue white burble brook
salmon swift through spray

dancing carelessly across time
blue water green water
one fish two fish

or are words like water
free to flow where they go
heeding the call of the moon?
big blue whales
tasty yellowtails

law as the arcane instrument over the chaotic churn of nature

tides that pull and release, swell and subside
ever changing as a reflection of the mind

- The Creative Law Society Email List

When I was young I was told

that the law flows to justice as water flows downhill.

But when I was twelve

we took a trip to Eastern Canada.

And out in New Brunswick they have a place called Magnet Hill

Where you go and park your car

And watch the water flow uphill.

I don't know but I suspect

that the law has its own Magnet Hills.

- Edan Rotenberg

CENSORED!

Two poems that didn't make the cut for reading before Justice Hobbs on account of their inherently scandalous nature.

A haiku

The law of water:

Don't pee in the reservoir.

Use a tree instead.

A limerick

There once was a sensible otter

Who wrote all the laws about water

He made it illegal

To murder a seagull

Unless you make out with his daughter

- Matt Holohan

Enjoy the Legal Things

A Terrible Poem, by Will Trachman

Enjoy the legal things;

The free lunches—they do exist.

The weather when it’s good, the weather when it’s bad—a little rain will do you good, a little sun will make you thirstier for water (law).

Enjoy the legal things;

The $7.00 Salads—you savor the food more when each bite costs $ .50.

Boalt’s diverse alumni—Earl Warren, Ted Olson, Rose Byrd, Pete Wilson, Justice Hobbs.

The OC club—making law school forget what it’s supposed to be.

The seminars listed on the class schedule—take a water law class.

The Uncle Zeb book in the library—is it the best, or only, way to talk to the Dean?

Enjoy the legal things;

That one room in the Hotel Durant where we all go during OCIP to look at employer profiles, schmooze about interviewers, and watch playoff baseball.

The visiting professors who teach half of your classes—at least you get a new perspective.

The Kegs in the Courtyard—try not to go to class intoxicated.

Enjoy the legal things.