Best Schoolchild Poems
Quote by M Rose: If love had a thousand faces they'd all look like yours
Your visage is what I'd seek first in my lost and found box.
I'd feel for the corners of my box with nimble fingers
eyes closed I'd brail the contours of your missing face
like a schoolchild pining for a spark of self esteem, I'd linger
on words last spoken, before you faded out of place
If love had a thousand faces I'd see only yours for all eternity
lost in a sea of despair, I'd search for you far and wide
like a mother craving for a child's return, I'd scour the city
rummaging the streets, looking in places you could never hide
If love had a thousand faces I would never look for anything new,
I'd take delight in the likes of you and only you.
“Dickhead”
There is a saddened kind of shame
a name that’s cruel and thus demeans,
elementary obscene
a child can not reach deep enough.
It started when I read above
my third grade level reading group
and followed to my brownie troop
then fearful fighting, flight to home.
And in defense I’d use my gift
to make up names and write mean songs-
I’d teach the boys to sing along
and charge their chocolate milk money.
With my moustache a poor disguise,
with puffy, rubbing, teary eyes
I made myself apologize
though only choking squeaks were heard.
Nicoleslaw Dickhead was my name
a name that’s cruel and thus demeans,
slimy side-dish dung for brains-
a child can not reach deep enough.
A long spine of asphalt, sizzling black
The macka back cart rumbling
On the morning nerve, herring sprat
Is high life some days in this place
Across the street the bakery
Up the street the parrot teaching me to curse
The hollow determination in any face
For we were all connected by a common shame
The sense that here was the bottom
And our pain was those on top of us
And zinc fences surrounding us
In the prison of our dream.
I was the child at the back of the crowd
After the evening prayers
And the rush for freedom
From the classroom corals that punished our desire
To find our own direction amidst the squall
Of trickery and gun fire ...
I was the child like a raggamuffin on the street
The distractor so my friends could cheat
Mr Bola of his dumplings
My pocket tell the truth of grease in them
I was the child stoning the mango trees
And then close to my gate ... drop back, boy
Behold, out of me a muted lamb appear
I remember, Mrs Donaldson, Byfield
And the tall wall, high as the East Indian tree
I remember Scott, Penley
The girl who almost stole my virginity
And long not now my inocense to keep
What joy for it I could have reaped
But I had neither asphalt nor concrete
Not backbone
Not knowledge of self, no longing for a me
While England's song I hummed those days
And mother's voice was my leash.
I could break on law
Without my brother's raw anger, the basket of his pride
The tamarind switch, my burning skin
The street at noonday filled with din
Firm as a cross
And I wandering it bewitched and lost.
hey pete
by Michael R. Burch
hey pete,
it's baseball season
and the sun ascends the sky,
encouraging a schoolboy's dreams
of winter whizzing by;
go out, go out and catch it,
put it in a jar,
set it on a shelf
and then you'll be a Superstar.
When I was a boy, Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player; this poem is not a slam at him, but rather an ironic jab at the term "superstar." Keywords/Tags: Baseball, Season, Boy, Schoolboy, Schoolchild, Student, Scholar, Winter, Spring, Sun, Catch, Star, Superstar, Jar, Pete Rose, Reds, Cincinnati, Big Red Machine, America, Fantasy, Humor, Hyperbole, Irony, Sports
Unlikely Mike
by Michael R. Burch
I married someone else’s fantasy;
she admired me despite my mutilations.
I loved her for her heart’s sake, and for mine.
I hid my face and changed its connotations.
And in the dark I danced—slight, Chaplinesque—
a metaphor myself. How could they know,
the undiscerning ones, that in the glow
of spotlights, sometimes love becomes burlesque?
Disfigured to my soul, I could not lose
or choose or name myself; I came to be
another of life’s odd dichotomies,
like Dickey’s Sheep Boy, Pan, or David Cruse:
as pale, as enigmatic. White, or black?
My color was a song, a changing track.
1/15/21
If you didn't, you better know now
Nearly always around smoke clouds
I was or I wasn't oath bound
Often telling me, I got no grounds
And that I need to slow down
I roam around
Or am homebound
With a new dog or old hound
Made noise, or no sound
Just giving you all the low down
It was kept silent or spoke aloud
Going solo or with the whole town
It was false or accurately wrote down
Just the way it goes down
Because of what goes around
Another showdown
And throw down
From the hometown
To far beyond here to Motown
Bumped into you in the food aisle
It's good to see you smile
In a world that can be too vile
I've been developing a new style
Got to cover much more than a few miles
What I seek to accomplish, is in a huge pile
Of loose tiles
Since I was a schoolchild
Going through trials
The patterns cease or continue to cycle
I've been thinking often
And battling a drinking problem
Sinking to the bottom
My mom reminding me, it's just bringing me to the coffin
Similarities or not a single thing in common
It's rather obvious
Having difficulty stopping this
And on making accomplishments
There was complete honestness
Or broken promises
It was easy or onerous
One thing I do is honor it
Remaining humble and anonymous
Raise your child very carefully
otherwise your child could get damaged psychologically like me.
I could have attended any college university.
I could have had numerous Associate and Bachelor degrees,
but as previously stated, I'm damaged psychologically.
I've put a barrier between standard higher learning and me,
all because my child and teenage years in school
were spent in an environment so very cruel.
Nervously twitching standing in front of my class,
praying to answer correctly or appear like an ass.
I never was one who ever truly did fit in
and became another victim of ostracizing.
School yard bullies also had their share of fun,
making me curse the day I was born.
so when school finally ended, school was over officially for me.
No college university, no degrees for me.
Ever since my long ago school days of gloom
I've never felt comfortable in a classroom.
The school child not in it clad
To end up ‘Not Glad’:
A sure vexing of his body with whip
And final nursing of an inflamed hip …
Also, a barbaric conversion into laborer
Which makes his Disciplinarian A torturer…
The school’s spear grasses to down mow
And her refuse dumps in trucks tow.
Still a freezing interview to face,
Interviewers’ final finding “A Purposed Disgrace”
For a child could a launderer grab in time
To avoid The Unwashed School Uniform Crime …
The Pardoned upon a second default
To be shown his waiting vault.