Bought nine notebooks from a thrift store
they were cheap, sure, but something more
they smelled like lilac’s form an old lady’s house
an aroma that doesn’t make me gag or grouse
Growing up is a notebook
Each chapter a different stage of life
Innocence is the first pages
Lines are drawn in graphite
mistakes can be erased without leaving a mark
And new words replace the previous
Ink replaces graphite
Erasers scrub and scrub aggressively against the worn-out pages
Until they ache
Smudges reveal a harsh reality
The characters we choose to inscribe stay with us forever
Words cannot be taken back
They can be covered up, but the truth still lies beneath
Beneath the lies, beneath the judgement, and beneath the stares
Growing up is how we choose to write
In our notebooks
I love my school things:
Crayons, ruler, and pad paper,
Glue, sharpener, and eraser;
Pens and pencils in a tin box
That need not close with any locks.
Some pocket money makes me smile--
To buy a gum to share with Kyle.
Notebooks with pictures on the cover
Of my idols--like Justin Bieber!
Oh, wait, there’s one thing I forgot--
The lunchbox which Mom newly bought.
And where to place all of this stuff?
In my school bag, there’s space enough!
March 26, 2023
Among 1st Place
Children Sing to Rhyme Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Eve Roper
Like Thoreau I sought out Walden’s Pond
For me, it was my grandmother’s field of soybeans
Lost in the bowels of a small gray shed I fancied a cabin
I stumbled on it when I was eight, an explorer, in the summer.
It became mine almost immediately, and I dragged in pillows.
If it had been closer to the house I might have brought a chair,
But it was not in the back forty, it was in the back two hundred.
So I brought a pillow, a notebook, pencils, and my lunch.
You should have taken a clock, Grandma later told me.
Many times, for I was late for supper every single evening.
So caught up in writing about the frogs, bogs, hogs, and other wonders
I found on my grandparent’s farm.
I have six notebooks full of that summer.
When I was nine, my mother signed me up for soccer,
But I never forgot the summer I was eight and how much
like Thoreau I was.
I loved every single second in that gray “cabin”, my personal sanctuary
Where I splayed myself over a pillow and simply wrote my heart out.
There's a bag I like to keep,
A lil' ol'e bag
O' mine.
Its green
Canvas build,
Its BSA
Tag, its
Frayed edge
So fine.
This lil' o'le bag
O' mine.
What is kept inside its fine green frame?
A couple o' pencils, a stack o notebooks,
A lockpick set and padlock (for fidgeting)
Brown good-luck stone and a pen-knife.
It is all in this little old bag of mine.
I found my son’s old notebooks
Going way back to first grade.
His early writing and his thoughts
Are carefully displayed.
He was a quiet kid and mostly
Praise he did amass
But there, repeated 15 times:
“I will not talk in class.”
I marveled as his skills improved
And humor did appear
As he matured and gained a bit
More confidence each year.
These notebooks are a pure delight
But I am in a fix;
I hate to throw them out, but hey –
My son is 36!
People are always giving me notebooks
Once they find out I write
At christmas
At birthdays
At random
At least two a year
They sit in a stack on my shelf
Hundreds of pages blank
Hundreds of poems unwritten
White page syndrome
Magnified ten fold
Intimidation radiating off them in waves
I prefer to use a computer
There, the pages are infinite
The limits are unknowable
No silent expectations to fulfill
Just a never ending canvas
Word upon word, sentence upon sentence
Some a little absurd and others about repentance
Some many of them just sitting there that sometimes I have to pry
Then saying, we’ll that isn’t fair and that’s just a flat out lie
But as I read more and reopen my heart
I see God at their core, He’s becoming a bigger part
So easy to write but much harder to follow
So now I don’t feel right, I just feel hollow
So as I set them back away, words still weighing on my heart
I kneel down and pray saying Lord this is a new start
Pondering each sentence through and going about my way
Being careful of what I do and of what I say
So the next book I add will keep me on my path
For those I feel so sad whom will soon face God’s wrath
But all I can do is write and say hey over here
For He has shone His Light and I can see it clear
The soul, my notebooks and I
The ant lies dead in her coffin
With no one at her funeral
But I and my notebooks
And her own soul
I sat clasping
My mountains of notebooks
Firmly to my chest crying
The size of goodbye.
How often have I blundered
at the precipice
with brimming enthusiasm
hollowed by doubt and
want for survival?
With breath arrived a passion
to express beyond mere words
the notion that we are never alone
even when gripped by horrors
wrought against fellows.
Along your spiral spine I climb.
Your teeth clamor knowingly
with palpable fear at being dutiful
to the whims of an impatient
and infantile mortal.
Within the discarded stack lie
tattered attempts and regrets,
my soul laid bare on a bear skin.
"I promise to push harder since
peril provokes my pen."
the first time i took a pen and wrote some words on a notebook it was for a grade.
now i live it.
now i breathe it.
i express my feelings, feeds my soul.
to publish a least one book is my goal.
writing my everything.
i bleed it.
when i writing it takes all my worries away.
i want to be admire for my thoughts.
writing is my heart, my life.
marry to writing.
addicted to writing.
poems, songs, and story.
i express my feelings, feeds my soul.
i write until it hurts.
nothing matters as long as it's me, myself, and my notebooks.
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