Your jar of pickled poems–
cheek puckering poetry,
sour smiles behind glass–
makes me laugh.
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My students handed in their poetry collections today. Among them is a jar with poems written on green pickle shaped papers. 🙂 Bethany wins cutest poetry project. Too bad it wasn’t a contest. (Hmm. Maybe next year?!)
There was no way to stay.
Whatever choice was made
was bound to be wrong,
because this song we create
requires we pay again and again
for our harmonic
dissonance.
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Still reading Jodi Picoult’s Mercy. Do you write poems for the characters you read about?
Her belly is hollow.
Once it was filled with him,
but she has been excavated
and spun into emptiness.
.
Her head is hollow.
Once it was filled with him,
but she has been desolated
and spun into heaviness.
.
Her life is hollow.
Once it was filled with him,
but she has been devastated
and spun into enviousness.
.
Her hope was hollow.
Once it was filled with him,
but she has been extricated,
and spins into readiness
Under your skin
you’re kindling dreams.
Letting just enough
hope gleam through the ash.
Your head says,
“You can’t.
It won’t be,”
But the kindling dreams
wonder,
“Why
not
me?”
I lean against stone
eyes closed
longing for what was
or what will be,
what was lost without
reason or rhyme.
I lean against stone
and in dreams,
see time.
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An Outlander themed poem
You’re down the hall
sleeping
and I am awake
missing you
wishing you
were here
to assuage
this ache.
You are
an uncommon mystery
that baffles the sleuths
You are
a melodious litany
of spiritual truths
You are
a sonorous villainy
raising the roofs
You are
in my periphery
and have been since youth.
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Don’t ask. Sometimes I don’t have a clue what they’re really about, either. 😉
Video with my narration is in the previous post, but here’s the written version:
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Measuring
Shawn L. Bird
This is me.
The standardized test says,
“She’s a C.”
But no standardized test
can measure my capacity.
The provincial exam or S A T
does not evaluate my reality.
A test does not see
my creativity
my audacity
my tenacity
my congeniality
No test can reveal
my totality.
They say
a standardized test demands gravity,
but I say,
it is a depravity
to define our youth with such rationality!
This is me.
No standardized test can measure
who I will be.
Here’s a video poem I made for a presentation on issues in standardized testing for my Faculty of Education Master’s class on assessment at University of British Columbia (Okanagan campus) (aka UBC-O).
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Shawn L. Bird 