Academic Writing Samples
Not-So-Iron Man Anymore:
Avenging Tony Stark’s Toxic Masculinity
Through A Friendly Neighborhood Teenage Spider-Man
Neon Lights Aren’t Dimming, They Are Finding a New Glow
As part of an American studies course, I wrote an analysis of masculinity as portrayed in pop-culture, specifically in superhero films. This writing sample represents my ability to write critically about cultural artifacts and social issues.
This essay was intentionally structured like The Atlantic's Object Lessons. It is a testament to my research skills and versatile writing style.
Adopted by a Corporation:
Truman Burbank as a ZÌŒizÌŒekian Symbol for Society’s Sons
This essay is my best philosophical work and is written as a review of the film The Truman Show. The essay analyzes the movie through a ZÌŒizÌŒekian lens in an attempt to uncover the hidden ideological nuances that are a reflection of our society.
Poetry
A few samples of personal poetry writing.
Poetry is a way of expression for me and I want to share some of the ones I'm most proud of.
Alarm Clock
tick the clock
awaken my love
salute the rules of the commonwealth
the fragrant black coffee
divine breaking daylight
is but a passing moment
the weight of slumber tackles me
to the depths of the sofa
the sunken space of my cortex
make amends with blurred apperception
a slave to the day
shackled by structure
flagellated by faux productivity
an egg cracked is just a shell
the electricity of existence
smothered per rubber
quaff on dark roast
this is really just water
a fresh waking moment
squandered by impotence
my muscles tense from desuetude
the catalyst is omitted
to look forward to a stroll
or that coffee
or that sun
the sheets of authority
that say “it is time”
cover me once more
Kinder
Little tinker from an egg with no shell
Seemingly benign thing with eyes
Gentle artifice with flappy ears
Grey paint job, separable parts
Such tricky construction
Who am I to name you and your hunks
Oh, monster of Alkebulan
My garden is your playground
And I make you my toy
I created you in the reflection of myself
Fragile, plastic object with a 2 cent exchange rate
Tomorrow, I will trade you for an alien
Picked up from a claw machine
I scrap you like an artillery shell
Your golden-capped ivory
Has-been deemed your salvation
but you’re discarded like the second kidney
thrown away like a stone
on the shore of the watering hole
You’ve been truncated, reduced to a scale
Defined for your parts and your horns
The wisdom warrior of Savannah
So playful! So large! So precious!
So long old friend, I enjoyed the time
I held you in my head, I’ll forget about you
Odd looking thing, you’re just a plastic toy
The Butcher
Traced his open hand along the corium of a hip crease. Affectionately cut, sliced, digging his calloused fingers. Deeply into a young fawn, weighing the cut in his scaled head.
This leg would go for 87 at the shop. The Butcher gave out. He knew, often the seller of livers, links, tripes, whole pigs and hearts. Cheap young buck!
The Butcher, working harder and harder than his adolescent, apprenticed years. Hang another up to dry. It’s ready for the cleaver.
Carcass out the sticky pool, disgusting, dripping, wet, narcissus soaked in sweat and blood.
Like a hound, sniffing of splice, vain, gore feeling like ichor on the marble floors of the parthenon. Red reflection of Eros in the grand pools of Hades, staring at the white walls of a gentrified heart.
He could slice cold cuts or craft a marble of a T-bone, instead ripping a rib and stabbing it into the eye of a goat. Thrilled by carnage, and fear, like a deer in the overhead light of the butchers chopping table, to incarnate through a planted seed in the tarnished body of his prey.
He let it sit, to rot. Flesh, out. Maggots took over his business, became the mind of his universe, the living conscious, reproduced postcoital, and scavenged the last of The Butchers guts.
Melted Ice
we tend to pretend that the physical manifestation of the object in question will remain, wrapped and bundled in pure essence, of warm love play, ephemeral and eternal and infinite. and so as we caress our skin with the softness of a score, we pretend.
consider the chalice covered in morning dew and sulk in the coldness of the ice water it holds,
we chipped our teeth about the beauty of the frozen crystals and imagined them to be ever still
water that does not evaporate and cubes that do not melt, a solid sculpture. this, piece of art that so methodically came to represent another. a cup of water on the bedside table became a figment of our beliefs. treasured, pure, and fleeting object, drops that trickle away.
some grasp towards another moment in the future, believed the glass half full will remain, permanence. as if ice doesn’t melt and water doesn’t evaporate. you’ll keep it, unchanged and frozen, there until the next time, you say. I pretend too, but a true clock-worked lover knows that it’s a matter of degree. my bloodshot eyes, searing, had already melted the ice with the gentleness of sun rays, I kissed your lips one last time. and as you peeked through the cracks of the doorway, thirsty for another glance, I flowed down the warm river of forgetfulness.
my eyes; melted ice
sinking over time chilled lust
must move like Lethe
Dissolve
I
Sweetest sugar cube,
I write of you today!
A soliloquy of my gratitude,
for you have shown me all sides;
Three at a time, to be exact!
Of the nature of my imagination.
I remember you
The time I possessed you:
My fingers
run
along your edges,
My eyes
dance
across your facade,
My tongue
gushes
at your splendor,
And my mind…
My mind rushes for more,
For everything,
everything in its completeness.
I dream up the ways
I could get to you, your grains;
To the crystals inside your castle
Within the six walls that confine you.
How could I get to know those sides of you?
That despite my debauching
You hide from me, perversely.
Despite Marcel’s warning
to be weary of saccharine appearances
I pursue you.
my sweet desire.
​
II
Small, dense, form.
I grasp you!
I do!
I do!
Oh yes, I do!
I know you
to be light and easy!
So I twirl you around, across the ballroom
of my brain; a philanderous dance of sorts.
But you,
you play firm, and I,
I am unable
To see you essentially!
To hold down six sides!
To break you apart into the fractals of
Truth, I so wanted to call reality…I
I am desperate for you,
for all of you…
And in my fatuous haste, I grip at you with silver tongs
Then, you crumble in my mind.
And in my mind I die a little,
A sweet death, to be sure.
The weight of me is heavy
My heart beats with sweat
And in dizzied confusion, I release you
Into the depths of the lake of my Earl Gray tea.
And I…I fall with you,
out of fondness for your purity,
or so I imagine…
But by the time you sank I forgot every thing
The insufficiency of your name,
And the way you shine ephemerally,
And how stubborn you are!
I forgot everything.
Even the limitations of your existence.
You had been so strong in your bareness,
So real and intentional, but now
Now I could merely remember you.
III
Drained
I scavenge for energy
of some form
I recalled the first time
A memory as reliable as the narrator
I saw you
You sat, delicately
as if on engraved china
that taste, the impression you left,
was so so bitter and so
I went looking for you again,
I will not lie.
In futile pursuit of the memory of you
I peered into my teacup’s reflecting pool
You can imagine my surprise!
I, realized.
I had tried to paint you into a romantic portrait,
Draped in the same violent violet
Color of human royalty, tinged with naked existence,
Sweetened with the fruits of God’s apple tree
That gave birth to me and we and He
And so gave you the chance to be
Or at least feign to be
A product of nature and authenticity
Open to my divine human touch
And my ability to see, and ability to feel,
And to observe, and to imagine
The penumbras of your horizon.
I’m sorry, sugar cube,
To me, you were intentional,
The purest, sweetest love.
But you could never be more;
More than an object,
A captive
of the dungeon of my imagination.
That day,
I bathed in the sweetness of your blood;
As if The Fountain Of Youth;
And I dissolved with you.