Long Fifth grade Poems

Wise Elders are patient,
fully embrace non-violent communication
and health care
of climates and landscapes,
persons,
places,
things,
plants
and planet,
hopes
and dreams
rebuilding positive faith.

Wise Elders non-violently listen
for karmic grace of love
sometimes overflowing.

If Wise Revolutionaries for change,
clearing murky swamps,
then Wise Elder non-violent evolutionaries
toward peace
restoring...

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Chief garbage taster as fifth grade Halloween gag
at Henry Kline Boyer Elementary School
interestingly enough landed me a grubhub grab bag.

I rooted thru poetry anthology of mine,
and came across an unpublished poem
by one obscure poet (me),...

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As soon as I heard 
You were the First African American Male
To win the Pulitzer prize for Poetry
I wanted to run out and celebrate
I wanted to wake up Hughes and Dunbar
And Baraka and say we...

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at Henry Kline Boyer Elementary School

As a Halloween costume, 
one year during early grade school, 
my father got the brilliant idea 
for his sole son to be dressed 
with one of a kind getup.

Missus Shaner...

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Chief egalitarian garbage taster i.e. “white trash”

As Halloween costume, 
one year during early grade school, 
my father got brilliant idea 
for sole son dressed
uniquely rubbish qua 
putrid offal getup. 

Missus Shaner (talon clawed, 
shriveled relic...

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Happy birthday, my love….
Today you turn forty-seven years old, dear sister... 
May your wings shine brighter today than ever before.

May my smile bring you joy and laughter. Oh, how your laughter saved me so many...

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I’ve always loved music. As a little girl, I could spend hours going through peoples CD collections, sampling them with my little battery-operated CD player. If you showed me a stack, rack or box of...

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I was in second grade when I started comparing myself to other girls.
I asked myself, “why am i not her?” “why are my thighs bigger?” “why can’t i have her blonde hair that seems to...

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Electorate witnesses wounded beast...
flailing, lurching, and writhing in throes of agony

Trumpets blare acknowledging
crack hunters lucky strike,
i.e. bullseye salvo shot at
innocuous yet brutish
and nasty looking Homo sapien
courtesy elite militia incapacitates,
(yet doth not kill) mortal enemy.

Tis a...

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Agnes Beaudette stood in front of her fifth-grade class on the very first day of school in the fall and told the children a lie. Like most teachers, she looked at her pupils and said...

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A man sits by a fire, No life partner, or companion besides his beloved cat. 
The cat he calls Mr kittles which is loving and gentle and has kept the man sane throughout the years.
He...

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I was born on July 20, 1958.

Being one of seven children and having a mid-summer birthday, even as a young boy, it was 
not uncommon for my birthdays to come and go without much fanfare.

In...

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I faced alarming paradoxes
as I headed toward puberty.

First,
my King James Bible-belting parents,
extended family,
and all-hopelessly-WHITE farm community
taught me

God loves me
and all the children,
red and yellow,
and black almost as much as white.

That felt good
but then I learned...

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I lived out loud, so they must have seen,
But they don’t know me, no one does.
The few I let in, must not have been
The ones I really needed, 
I discarded them as lessons learned 
–...

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Once long ago in the fifth grade I had a small vocabulary.
Maybe from the hill folk family where I grew up On Caytons' Hill. We were not hillbillys. There is a big difference. They now...

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Once long ago in the fifth grade I had a small vocabulary.
Maybe from the hill folk family where I grew up On Caytons' Hill. We were not hillbillys. There is a big difference. They now...

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NRIs (Non-reading incorrigibles) always start their public school careers not in August or September, but rather on November 16th, because November 15th is the day all schools get paid in full for the entire school...

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Edwin C Hofert

4-14-15

I was born in nineteen sixty the lion is my sign.
All my clothes were handed down there was nothing I called mine. 
There were six of us called siblings we didn't turn out...

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Tough skinned -strong, take it and dish it out.  
Thin skinned - overly sensitive.  
Skin of our teeth -
struggle for life, survival. 
Skin defines and designs us, 
the skin we’re in, through pain,...

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To Mom Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Francine Roberts


At birth the cord was severed, though our hearts stayed connected,
    I’ve seen more beauty in your heart the more I have reflected. 

You quilted a Peter...

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ANSWERING AN ABSTRACT
 
do you trust the world not to fall on you?
 
i’m standing on the world, i have to trust
myself not to drop. i’m an implosion of doom
enjoying expressions like good grief, my...

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I was only nine years old when I first met you,
with brown hair and big brown eyes.
I was the smallest and quietest girl in your class
Sitting in the front row, always staring at the black...

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I wrote this as a tribute for one of my former teacher, Mrs. Barbara Shaw.
With Her keen abilities to teach and reach the hearts of children of all
ages, coupled with a caring nature and calm...

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It's been twenty (20) years going on forever since I'd been bullied around. It seemed that this devastating event would never go away;  it was going to haunt me for the rest of my...

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Joe and Jacque almost met on a Friday in 1996, but not really
They kind of glanced at each other, not speaking
In line for a train heading to Hanover Park, Illinois.
He did not even know her...

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