Long Schoolroom Poems

He studied and sought dreams to become a teacher
Sometime his days and plans are torn to pieces
Leaving place of learning without a backward glance
Onward to a School of not his choosing.
Area described as working class
Teenage...

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A restless night, another hum-drum day,
Resolve to take a pleasurable walk;
I make my way towards St Mary’s church.
Across the street, a sixteenth century home –
Maltravers Manor, testament to time.

I’m heading for the ancient Hollow Way
Where...

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Kummerspeck
(Lisandro's Song)

Little Lisandro (he's white, don't get
offended)
sits at a desk in a schoolroom he'd rather not be in
forced by people he doesn't know
to do what he'd rather not do.

The people keep telling him:
"Lisandro, life isn't...

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Today, meandering through the clutter of the local antique store,
I almost tripped and fell over an object partially hidden on the floor!
My hands came to rest on an old-fashioned school desk sitting there.
It reminded me...

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Yesterday I caught the drift of a word
Almost at the end of Dr. Ram?s words
That I had it all, three in one, with music and no regrets
Stirred my mind and made me think
What regret really...

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She was a mere eighteen when she began her teaching career,
Never dreaming that a teacher's life could be so austere.
The challenges she met weren't mentioned at "Normal School".
She coped, teaching readin', ritin', 'rithmatic and the...

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Twitching limply atop an Ulster lamppost
Like a hung man, legs kicking in spasm at the last seconds of life
Its bigoted purpose now spent and now abandoned to the elements
No longer recognisable as the flag of...

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The Schoolroom is the world
With God's wisdom unfurled
But fools govern today
To the oppressed's dismay

For His wisdom they disdain
So much they cannot explain
Proud because of their gain
He humbles the vain with bane

Man's wisdom cannot compare
Because he...

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I relive the nightmare of seeing my papa hanged
At six, I didn’t know I could cry so hard and so much
They dragged him to a tree while the crickets sang
It deprived me of any chance...

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Another dead from injuries
In this latest mad attack.
Gun-downed by a supposed friend,
She had no time to fight back.
The fifteen year old gunman
Has died by his own hand.
Because of him, two others dead.
No one can understand.
Four...

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Loneliness the circles
In which the daydream never ends
I wish you'd go away those times
So I could find you once again

Perhaps a hole-in -middle whirlpool
The nothing that ever stays
A fist of clenching handful
A farmer begging God...

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I remember when…
   I tied myself to the chair in first grade.
   Taking seriously Teacher’s red light -
   “Young lady, if you don’t stay in your seat…”
  ...

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Some folks put Jesus in a box 
and take Him out on Sunday,
when church is over bring Him home 
and He’s boxed again by Monday.

There are other folks who do not let Him
hang around at...

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A doctor saved his eye
then he took it away
by hiding it from the boy’s face.

His hands were puppy dog tails
wagging blindly.
He played a game of Scrabble
with a Brail alphabet
as his only guide

He would enter a...

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she saved a bird
after
he landed
with feet in the air
near
the ceramic bunny —
someone’s brother
(in the garden)

ginger snaps
on her cool desk.
cages upon cages
of snakes
and an orange-cheeked
cockatiel.

i loved to talk
to that bird
“Twhoo, twhoo, twhoo”

the bird was there
in the...

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