The Lost World

Derrick Poem (The Lost World)
by Terrance Hayes
I take my $, buy a pair of very bright kicks for the game at the bottom of the hill on Tuesday w / Tone who averages 19.4 points a game, & told me about this spot, & this salesman w / gold ringed fingers fitting a $100 dollar NBA Air Avenger over the white part of me–my sock, my heel & sole, though I tell him Avengers are too flashy & buy blue & white Air Flights w / the dough I was suppose to use to pay the light bill & worse, use the change to buy an Ella Fitzgerald CD at Jerrys, then take them both in a bag past salesmen & pedestrians to the C where there is a girl I'd marry if I was Pablo Neruda & after 3, 4 blocks, I spill out humming "April in Paris" while a lady w / a 12 inch cigar calls the driver a facist cuz he won't let her smoke on the bus & skinny Derrick rolls up in a borrowed Pontiac w / room for me, my kicks & Ella on his way to see The Lost World alone & though I think the title could mean something else, I give him some skin & remember the last time I saw him I was on the B-ball court after dark w / a white girl who'd borrowed my shorts & the only other person out was Derrick throwing a Spalding at the crooked rim no one usually shoots at while I tried not to look his way & thought how we used to talk about black women & desire & how I was betraying him then creeping out after sundown with a girl in my shorts & white skin that slept around me the 5 or 6 weeks before she got tired of late night hoop lessons & hiding out in my crib there at the top of the hill Derrick drove up still talking, not about black girls, but dinosaurs which if I was listening could have been talk about loneliness, but I wasn't, even when he said, "We should go to the movies sometime," & stopped. Observation: I observe from this poem that there are a few themes. The first one I noticed was the poverty. He talks "ghetto" but he almost seems like he longs to be with the upper class people who "smoke 12 inch cigars" on the bus and get to call the driver a fascist. At the end he seems to reach that at the end of the poem. Interpretation: I think the others voice talks from the lower class up to the upper class, and makes it seem almost sophisticated so that he can get his message across. He gives detail, which he thinks make it seem nicer. And it is. He shows us his life with the detail. Extension: I think this poem speaks for a lot of people that long for a better life. People want new friends and new people you know and new clothes and new privileges. I think that's what this poem talked about. I think this is the kind of poetry people should be writing.