The ants invade
these days
in waves
and my brain is just crazed
with ways to contain them –
stop them
although, I’m afraid,
that that can of Raid is no longer part of
our chemical brigade
and while finger-crunching-kids may play
the role of the Giant,
it remains a fact that more and more ants
are coming in out of the shade
to stay
and our only hope
is to sweep the crumbs from the counter tops
away.
Be gone, ants,
or
I’ll make you pay with another of my
terrible, awful, insubstantial
tirades.
My poem that uses SMS/Text Messaging shortcuts made a recent Edutopia Magazine article on the use of text messaging in the classroom and its push into the lexicon of young people.
Yesterday, we all sat around and wrote. It was another freewriting opportunity for the kids and for me, too. I didn’t give them any directions, really, just space to write. We didn’t share. We didn’t talk. We wrote and then when it was time to leave, we put our notebooks away and that was that. While they were making comics or writing stories or reflecting on their past weekend, I was hit by an urge to write some poetry, and my mind was wandering around the idea of the End of the School Year.
So, these are three of the four poems I wrote during the freewriting times of my four writing classes yesterday. The fourth poem didn’t make the cut, but there still might be some fragments to pull from the fire on some other day. Words are never lost, they just await their time.
I’d count the days
if I had the time
But time is elusive here
as the days slip past.
I am torn
between who you were,
who you are
and who you are becoming,
and wonder where
my place in your story will be
when the years have washed ashore.
You are more than
what my pen can hold
and beyond a form
to take shape on this paper
beneath fingers.
On stage
you were transformed
into something unrecognizable
even to me –
the silent one no longer silent
but with a voice
like a wolf
pouncing on those words
like prey.
I was there, with you, on stage,
in the moment
behind the curtain
I believed you in a way
I (perhaps) had not believed in you before
I wonder where that person lives
in you –
when I call on you,
I am only met with confusion.
Another summer awaits you;
your parents are content to let you sit
and simmer in the heat –
and you, thinking your thoughts of no way out;
I know you need structure
an excuse to write,
to learn;
to move among us in the living
from your world behind the mask.
In the days ahead,
I will mail you a book — some pens and paper –
anonymous, as always –
and cross my fingers that it reaches you
in time ….
before the doldrums move you
into the path of the thunderstorms
of summer.
This week’s Day in a Sentence was narrowed down to Day in Six Words, and the words came from all over the blogosphere this week. There were many new voices (partly as a result of the 31 Day Comment Challenge), plenty of veteran writers, and an incredible collection of tales told in minimalistic creativity.
I am going to keep my own narrative intrusions in check this week and allow your voices to come through on their own (because, well, they don’t need any help from me). But I did do something a bit different with your comments/words this week as yet another way to bring us all together in once “voice” and you can find that experiment at the end of the post.
With further ado, here you go:
Seniors graduated Friday. A bittersweet celebration. — Cynthia
Learned lots from Will Richardson seminar — Anne M.
Not getting out produces distorted viewpoints. – Christine
Wet weepy spongy soggy rainbow day — Mary
With friends and sunshine, then rain. — Illya (who has been experimenting with six day memoirs on Twitter for the past few days, and I have been trying to keep up, too)
Did that Simon says no comment. — Ken (who originally let me know: Oil C wot oil do.)
Sydney Wednesday. Melbourne Saturday. Perth Tuesday. — Kathryn
Two-on-two, full-court — DUMB! – Larry (who admits that the full court game was a bit too much for him)
It’s that time…awards, honors, accolades. — Delaine
Telling students they’ve failed is excruciating. – Nina
Graduation ends K12; creates new beginnings! — Tonya
Last Wednesday class today!! Time for ….!?!?!!!! — Illya
Wondering if any “boilers” could hear me all the way from California hooting and hollering Wednesday night as many of the teachers and students in my filmmaking project headed onto to the stage at our regional SEVAs to receive awards and recognition?!? – Gail (more than six words but Gail also has leeway on my blog)
powered by ODEO
Meanwhile, at a Technology Across the Curriculum Conference on Saturday, I had participants in a podcasting workshop record their own Days in a Sentence. I did not limit them to six words, but you can listen to their voices (and I added a second sentence for this week, too).
PS — So, friends, I took your six words, mashed them all together, and created this found poem of your thoughts. It was an interesting endeavor and I believe all of you are represented in some fashion or another. What does the poem mean? The poet remains silent.
Six Words As Collective Thought A Day in Sentence Found Poem
In bittersweet simplicity:
the quilt of students we once received
now graduate
but just one soul creates celebration/importance;
Just one soul produces sunshine;
to dream a whirlwind of mud-covered
friends who encompass a “response” in these Days
and arrive wildly happy with honor,
then (in digitalstory festivals) I project rainbows of wolf-children wearing hats, two by two –
hooting and hollering like the spongy virtual frogs of Will Richardson
as these viewpoints arrive through the recognition that
learning always honors teachers (even with crazy kids encircled in whirlwinds).
I’m mulling this:
Does this stage of summer create new beginnings?
Or end the time of today?
Let go. Let go.
Hell yeah!
iirc
u thnk txt &wrds r doa
but omg rotfl bout that @shmh
‘cos ov cors, imo, 2moro will ch8g 4 us &4u
QFT: ppl r str8ng & lng str8ngr
th4, i activ8 ur txt 4u
w/lnks & soh fwiw &hope u
h/o 2 w/e u can
& now pls gt bc 2 yr hw
yer PAW
(An April challenge to write and post a poem a day for a week, as hosted by Two Writing Teachers)
I began this Week in Poetry Challenge with a hyperlinked poem and so I guess I should end it on the same note. I took a short poem cycle that I wrote for my students and went into the site called Hypertextopia to investigate its possibilities for hyperlinked composition.
The result is something I am calling Writing is a Voyage, which is a collection of poems about the act of writing and teaching writing to my students.
In the interest of sharing, I am including the full opening poem here, too.
I stand in front of the classroom
pen in hand
and think out loud in concrete thoughts
as my mind wanders
in couplets and rhyme
and dangles downward
in acrostic fashion.
Sometimes, I strap them into the seat
with the 5-7-5 seatbelts of a haiku
and other times, I present them with the rare diamond
of the cinquain.
They are richer than their dreams
although few may realize it
until years later
when I am an old man with a cane
and a mouth full of knowledge.
I know my students often think me full of nonsense
but I can’t help myself:
I am someone who writes
and I want them to compose their lives, too,
so I urge them on
and find new paths to explore,
new doors to open,
and then give them a gentle push
into unknown terrain of their mind.
The ideas will be their fortification
on this personal journey.
May they go with the grace of words.
Here is a screenshot of my poem in Hypertextopia (and you can click on the image to bring you to the actual poem, too)
(An April challenge to write and post a poem a day for a week, as hosted by Two Writing Teachers)
In the Middle
Our friend tells him he is the peanut butter and jelly
between the bread,
and that spot has always made him at odds with himself.
The older and the younger — simultaneous positions — and wondering
where he truly fits in.
He is the first to love, the first to shout,
the first to reach out to those in pain,
the first to stake out his ground,
the first in affection for affection’s sake,
the first to slam the door.
Yet something is happening to him even as we speak,
something transforming him from unsettled force in the world
into this steady and stalwart child.
Perhaps he is coming into his own and no longer needs
the bread on either side to hold him
together in place.
In honor of National Poetry Month, this week’s Day in a Sentence is hereby converted into Day in a Poem. You are invited to boil down your day or your week into a poem of any choosing, including freestyle (so, technically, a sentence might still work, particularly if you were creative with your formatting).
I invite anyone and everyone to participate, including my friends from the One Week Poetry Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. I would love to see some of those folks join our Day in a Sentence community, too.
Please use the comment feature on this post to submit your words. I will collect and protect them all until Sunday, when I shall release them to the world.
I decided to write my poem as a Haiku, inspired by a complete lack of sleep last night due to cries from inside the house (bad dreams) and outside the house (a fischer cat attack, I think), plus our happy cat who purred most of the night (prob glad he was not outside when the attack took place). Meanwhile, this is an incredibly busy day — we have our Quidditch Championship all day today, the kids have baseball practice until nightfall, and then I agreed to go on Teachers Teaching Teachers webcast tonight to talk about hyperlinked composition and student publications.
A night of no sleep
does not bode well for a day
of Quidditch frenzy
PS — In looking at Two Writing Teachers today, they define a form of poetry called a senryu as sort of like a Haiku, but about human nature. Perhaps I wrote a senryu today and not a Haiku, as it is not about nature.
PSS — Next week, Ben B. will take the helm of Day in … something.
(An April challenge to write and post a poem a day for a week, as hosted by Two Writing Teachers)
Not Quite Ready
I’m not quite ready to let go
of all of this
but the release is inevitable.
I took him in my arms the other day
and hugged him,
kissed his head,
and he blushed — his friends were watching –
but I could tell it was still OK.
The path forward inches as fast as the growth upward
and still we see the shimmer of the baby in his eyes –
the first born –
although soon, we won’t be looking down — we’ll be looking up.
And I’m not quite ready to let go.
(An April challenge to write and post a poem a day for a week, as hosted by Two Writing Teachers)
How To Build a Butterfly
I’ll show you, Daddy,
how to build a butterfly
from crayon colors and blue sky moments.
Look here as the wings take shape on gossamer dreams
against a green backdrop of the fresh spring grass.
It’s delicate, Daddy,
and only for your eyes, not your fingers.
My butterfly dances on the moon
when the moon is hiding,
so that only the two of them dance together
in tap-step harmony.
That is how you build a butterfly, Daddy.
What wondrous thing will you create, he says,
as I think, you.
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