Best Copybook Poems
I remember seeing a concrete pillar that dwarfed me,
I remember my eyes hurt because the sun was so bright,
I remember feeling the heat from the pavement reach my face,
I remember scribbling loads of woollen balls on my copybook in the classroom,
I remember my mother say to the nun “Well he is four now”,
I remember playing with a red and cream plastic toy in bed because I was sick,
I remember the nun wrapping my brother’s faeces in newspaper
and sending me home with it to give to my mother,
I remember kicking my legs under the bedclothes because it was Christmas Eve,
I remember seeing a ghost outside my bedroom door,
I remember waking up in agony seconds after I was run over by a car on the street,
I remember first falling in love with the young nurse in the hospital; I was nine,
I remember loving going to the dentist because it meant a day off school,
I remember believing that Indians were going to attack my uncle’s farmhouse,
I remember thinking cows were my aunts,
I remember seeing my mother naked,
I remember the way my father looked at me as he entered the room,
I remember crying because my mother said no,
I remember being lost in Galway,
I remember being found by my mother and she laughed and stroked my hair,
I remember my granny going into town and coming back with a silver gun for me,
I remember my father hitting me,
I remember serving mass and feeling important,
I remember the granny nun, who used to let me sit on her knee,
I remember being afraid of my teacher,
I remember my first lie,
I remember the lie was about sins I never committed but I admitted them to satisfy the
priest,
I remember my real sins, like stealing money from my mothers jar,
I remember feeling that I was a bad person,
I remember feeling ugly,
I remember feeling dirty,
I remember feeling hope secretly,
I remember planning to run away with my brother,
I remember promising to myself that I will never forget,
Memories matter.
Categories:
copybook, childhoodmother, father, me, father,
Form:
ABC
Hot as hell, emotions fire the flames,
Nervous about meeting doctors, nurses,
Curtain separates them from congregation,
The veil is not torn in two, but steamy adulation,
Courts their friendship sessions to distance,
Bible fanatic from mum, with a secular pretence:
Stationed to obey that mile that you go,
Faithful to womb child who does overthrow,
That divine validation of mundane everyday life,
Which never does blot his copybook, he’s your invisible wife,
Just because nothing bad happens, then he’s loving,
To be a feature of your relationships and thinking,
So good to give you a furtherer of your animations,
So fine to set converts and following by time within your devotions:
Baby born, and the first thing they said was Jesus!
But I did adjust like a jet, right arm spasm, religion to suss,
Because i had not related perfectly to my mum at all in her beauty,
By getting into a tizzy, a fix about her vaginal cavity:
The umbilical chord did suffocate around my neck,
Three times, and three times to many, ‘cos i hit the deck,
Put in an incubator, a machine my life to sustain,
Where i didn’t depend on maternal caresses to obtain,
That blooming continuation that does greatly assure you of your future,
You expectations, your understandings and boundaries to nurture;
The machine of oxygen and warmth did suffice,
To love this new born child as cold as ice,
To spiritual things and to worlds unknown,
By humankind who only know hell when it’s thrown;
And as I did lurk in my hospital bedroom, or ward,
Like a businessman who is playing the sure investment card:
I wished so much that black book to just disappear,
As it only wrought despair, anxiety and tumultuous fear;
My parents friends, stone cold as delinquent thieves,
Prayed though those days as they sang “Bringing In The Sheaves,”
Whilst appendices of nurses added that they’d do,
Convincing my parents, including doctor-trained dad, that I’d pull through,
They just read the bible to me, over and over,
Through glass ventilator, that separator which did cover,
Happy as chuck, pleased as punch and relaxed enough, in that clever machine,
I clearly didn’t see what they did mean,
Because I was dressed in the NHS, nothing less,
Never this sin to render or confess.
Categories:
copybook, baby, birth, emotions, health,
Form:
Tail-rhyme
I was scolding you
You were a 4-year-old
sitting in a big chair
at the dining room table
hunched over your copybook
the pencil in your hand
held straight, halting, looking lost
as you dragged the tip across the page
that has turned into a minefield
because one more misstep
another dot out of place
would set off a new explosion
projectiles masquerading as words
from the mouth of the preoccupied father
sitting next to you
not wanting to be sitting next to you
begrudging the time
Then I saw it
onto a blank spot on the page
a solitary teardrop lands
as if in slow motion
splatters
spreads
a translucent bloodstain on gauze
I don’t know if you remember it.
I certainly do.
Will.
Categories:
copybook, boy, child, cry, father
Form:
Free verse
I had my eye on him since the third grade, but I never told him how I felt
Back then girls were girls, they were never meant to be cheeky or bold
He sat behind me in math class, while he counted numbers on the board
I counted the beats of my heart each time he leaned in to ahum, cheat,
"I love the way your hair smells like rain"
he'd half whispered into his copybook
As he copied another math answer
he sent me thoughts laced with love
I was just a beginner with no flowery words or poems for Carlton cards
dad always said a good girl should be sensible and be good at accounts
As my daydreams accumulated like daisies on a windblown field of gold
I began to scrawl his name with a HB pencil, on my composition book...
"I love the way you smart me over "
he whispered a little octave higher
as he gleamed and then tried on his own
the intricate equation of math's design
I grew up and left to live in Nevada. For years I never set eyes on Enzo again
then one day I happened to open a magazine and there he was all grown up
He had become a bank tycoon with a boat and a car and a big orphan house
So, I wrote him a letter and inside I added the first poem I ever wrote.
"I love it when you lean over my shoulder "
for some reason that I cannot fathom
I get visions of you and me it a vat of grapes
If you did not exist, I'm sure I'd make you up
as for the poems I never wrote, well, after all our years together,
when I look into his deep blue eyes, I know he knows each one by heart...
Oct 6 2022
ps: This is not for contest, the length of it did not meet the criteria,
I hope you enjoy it anyways.
Categories:
copybook, childhood, love,
Form:
Free verse
Let I'm a piece of sheet, so be it,
The scrap of yours, the scrap of them,
I have no pity (I don't need it)
for past, I burnt I loved I ran
my soul (and it was very silly)
to playful eyes of yours, and bounce
my brig has wrecked, there was no feeling
since this time. Oh, there was no us!
Yes, I'm a piece of sheet, I'm tired
to stand my suffering (it's fine)
so long so hopeless in quiet riot
I trust new copybook with time
accept me in its embrace newly
in spite of evil and my woes,
My wings will lift me up, they truly
big, they are gorgeous, of course.
Let I was good in my confessions,
No, I'm not piece of sheet at all,
Oh, I was written with my passions,
But I am clean now, and my soul
is open, I'm not scared of falling,
My wings are lightly in the hight,
New hand will touch clean sheet with morning,
New copybook will frame my flight.
Categories:
copybook, emotions, feelings, hope, how
Form:
Lyric
Nobody knows everything
Not even a few
I find consolation in this
I hope you do too.
Some people are smart
In dress and retort
But could not compare
With lawyers at court
Others accept
They have limitations
And seldom aspire
To rise above their station.
Then there are those
With their heads in books
Who keep on their toes
With superior looks
Bespectacled people
Are assumed to be clever
They rarely blot their copybook
If ever.
Wild haired professors
Covered in chalk
They put on the pressure
Whenever they talk.
You may think you're clever
If only you knew
There is always someone
More clever than you
22 October, 2020
Categories:
copybook, 10th grade,
Form:
Rhyme
To Blot one's Copybook
A phrase that is now outdated
Then people used pen and ink to scribe
So words could be translated
In bygone days work was performed
With care and deliberation
To blot one's copybook
Was cause for consternation
It took your pride away
When you took a worried look
All you saw was the blot
That jumped out of the page
The longer you stared at it
The stronger your rage
You thought the page was ruined
And something pure had died
You had failed to notice
The perfection around the sides
Categories:
copybook, 10th grade,
Form:
Rhyme
There, my home
There, where good never comes within bull's roar of eer
There, where penurious rule the penury
There, my home
Where hazy are hopes and aspirations
Extort common men for piles of gold.
What a great leader! Please keep it up
Lo! Blotted copybook with corruption
Oh! Lord of karma
Shade is now on our beam ends!
The earth has swallowed and digest the good
Today, all heads above stinks
Indeed, they are pure
Words are more eloquent than silence!
For tomorrow holds cloudy sky
We need more voice to win!
To pull up one's socks on damnation
Our needs calls for strong constitution
Which extinguish the fire of starvation
And also stands as protection
For us and them the future generation
Categories:
copybook, africa, anger, corruption, freedom,
Form:
Political Verse
Altho' I didn't study for my Rorschach test
when the proctor a doctor a shrink
evaluating my perception in search of insight
to discover what I might really think
handed me ten pictures on a card
I took a long hard look
then knew exactly what I did see
and did not blot my copybook
as often what you're gazing at
is simply (on the dot) precisely that
so it was not difficult at all
personally from where I sat
to pass with flying colours
and unravel this Gordian Knot
it wasn't a butterfly moth or bat
sometimes an inkblot is just an inkblot
Categories:
copybook, fun, humorous, psychological, silly,
Form:
Rhyme