(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.

Writing is a Voyage
(dedicated to my students)

Listen to the Poem as Podcast

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)

Peace (in poetry),
Kevin

(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.

– Listen to the poem as a podcast

Peace (in poetry),
Kevin

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

– Listen to the poem as podcast

Peace (in reflective poetry),
Kevin

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)

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.

– Listen to the poem as podcast

Peace (in poetry),
Kevin

(An April challenge to write and post a poem a day for a week, as hosted by Two Writing Teachers)

Older Brothers

They stand
hands in pockets
watching
themselves as younger boys
when baseball was fun
and not just another mark on the calendar
with the coach mad
at some missed catch
and the game on the line
and all that stress
that follows you right up to the pitcher’s mound
night after night after night
and you can see it in their crooked stance
how they are pretending to run the bases in their minds
with high-five celebrations all around
and nothing but time on their hands.
The older they are,
the more they think how great it would be
to be young again
while the younger ones
hold close to aspirations of beating their brothers
at baseball.

– listen to the Poem as a Podcast

Peace (in poetry),
Kevin

ps — and to keep things on the lighter side, how about this classic Abbott and Costello skit about baseball.

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