About

Well, I am currently a computer science/technology teacher who’s been writing poetry regularly since I was 12. What began as something I did at night, while hiding in my room, has turned into an obsession of sorts. Poetry is my therapy, joy, a home, a friend, a companion and partner in dialogue. I want to share this relationship with my students, and hope they also find a way to find their voice through poetry.

Compiled in these posts are poems created mostly by third through fifth grade students along with the process as to how assignments/activities are selected. Students have been members in the school’s Spoken Word club or have been a student at some point in one of my classes.

The official title of the club/class was “Spoken Word: Poetry, Raps, and Lyrics”, which is currently non-existent, but won’t be for long. I guess I will also post some of my poems, which I write specifically for the students of the Spoken Word club, my classes, and community.

I’m hoping that eventually this blog becomes a continuous conversation about poetry, in particular the poetry of children.

09.2011.

The Poetry of Children

 

Breaking schemas

And

The molding of tomorrow’s youth

Into plastic soldiers

With replaceable, interchangeable personalities,

Guns, and names.

Marching away into the eve

Of tomorrow’s dawn,

Our

Children’s poetry

Will be

Bullets and gunshots ricocheting off the walls

That once supported dreams.

 

Left trying to decipher,

Marks on the wall,

Messages in graffiti,

If there was ever any

Meaning.

Cavemen left their marks on walls,

But these new scars relate misguided, disenchanted,

disenfranchised urban youth, revenge on the concrete

built on superficial ideals,

Wasted energy, fading hope, and savage inequalities.

 

Historians will remain in awe

At stains of blood,

Of murder filled books juxtaposed with fairy tales.

And these stories are yet to be recorded and written.

Depending on who dictates the future,

And how much everyone’s allowed to know,

They may never get written.

 

Thus the

Children’s poetry

Must not fall on

Or off

Deaf ears,

So that deviant behavior and memory

Will continue to remind

History,

And perhaps the whole conscious

Of present society,

Of those ignored, gentrified, and pushed to the outskirts

Until permeating the psyche.

Being that truth cannot be

Hidden or buried,

Children’s poetry

Will come out beating

To rhythms the color of love

That most people have already long forgotten.

Beatings and rhythms,

Washing out

The bitterness the present has left us.

Or maybe it’s just me that keeps hearing

The same thing,

The same song

That everyone’s been singing.

All the radio’s been playing.

Dewey would argue what the schools have been teaching

For centuries since the Romans and Greeks,

Or what corporate entities dictate through promoting.

 

Because

Nobody’s been listening,

Nobody is listening,

Nobody is listening

To the

Children’s poetry.

 

Cause what could they possibly teach anybody?

 

The

Children’s poetry,

Strange mutterings,

Frequencies,

But transmissions

Have had a tendency of being

Intercepted,

And thus the message has yet to be

Fully understood.

But children still believe in poetry.

Translating messages for history,

Some must start then decoding these writings and movements

Before an eternal silence befalls us all.

Trying to figure

Children’s poetry,

Already hiding in alleys,

Break dancing, and drawing on walls.

Trained to be just like little adults.

Learning quickly to bully and scheme,

How to politic and maneuver,

Aaaarrrggghhhhh.

Next comes the nervous breakdown.

Screaming, shouting, shooting in schools.

  

Wait.

It’s already happening.

Wait.

  

Because

Nobody’s been listening,

Nobody is listening,

Nobody is listening

To the

Children’s poetry.

  

Listening to the static off the vinyl

Interwoven into the grooves

Until foundations come down crumbling

Off the bass

From the

Children’s poetry.

Yelling to be recognized

As a single living identity, entity,

Independent of society’s standards and schemas

Of how children are supposed to be.

The whole of society seems bent and content with silencing

What echoes tremble in the voice of

Children’s poetry.

Dancing, running, playing, exploring, discovering

Without guides, barriers, or grown ups

At peace to develop like haiku:

  

The child once had thoughts

Till order became borders

The child could not cross.

  

The child still has dreams,

But rules are raised up like walls.

Free the child in me.

  

Please.

 

Free the child in me.

Please.  Free the child in me.  Please.

Free the child in me.

  

Free the child in me.

Please.  Free the child in me.  Please.

Free the child in me.

  

9.24.04.