I am From Poem

My students did a poem in class based on a classical poem which used anaphora and imagery to describe the author's background. I did my own for an example, and liked it a lot.

I am From

I am from music,
Spilling from fingers
Over ivory keys
Winding down the years.

I am from early dinners,
Sat around the aged expanding table
With an entire family of faces.
Or going hungry.

I am from cold, hard pews
Abandoned at twelve,
For their long dull sermons
And unheard unfelt messages
That always brought sleep.

I am from quiet streets,
With gray haired drivers
Who inch along dead thoroughfares
In a town with nowhere to go.

I am from desks and walls,
Full of bound paper escapes.
From elves to eldritch squamous bogs.
From sayings like You can do anything,
to "College is success",
And serendipitous victories
Undeserved with no study.

From a past on one side,
To a future on the other side
Of the teacher's desk,
And papers, ad infinitum.

Boredom Haiku

I've been sitting in a two hour lecture a lot, so I have written some haiku to pass the time....

USF Interns,
Must certainly be stupid:
You repeat so much.

Like a resume?
What else would it resemble?
Steaming pile of crap?

Students do group work,
With all the grace and focus
Of headless chickens.

A cover letter
Is not your philosophy.
What fool thought it was?

USF students
Do not need wit to succeed.
Just how to jump hoops.

Administration
Is not about the students.
But passing figures.

Teaching is about
Fooling the powers that be,
So students can learn.

Class is half over.
Time to take a break and walk,
To porcelain shrine.

Insomniac

The night wears on,
With weary tread,
My head is heavy,
So far, my bed.
My eyes pried open,
Staring wide.

Thoughts race by,
So too does time:
Against myself
Committing crime.
Why can't my
Mind at last
Be still?

My body aches.
My eyes are dry.
The sun arises,
In eastern skies.
The night betrayed
By my lack of sleep,
Trudge out the door,
No time to weep.

This horrid pattern,
A returning act.
It brands me still:
Insomniac.



(I know its sludge, but I have to write anyway.)