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GfS  May 2015
Torpe - Shy guy
GfS May 2015
I'm sorry if things would come out so wrong
It's just that I've loved you for oh so very long
I don't know how I should interact
Or how I should come to react
I'd stutter like I'm a big dork
I make worse conversations than that of a fork
But it's because I'm just charmed by your smile
I guess it's my way to stay with you for a while
I keep my distance, not because I want a good bye
But it's just that.. Well.. I'm way to shy
I get all shaky when our shoulders would touch
It's probably because I've longed for that so much
You must know what you do to me when our hands would simply touch
If happiness were a grading system, I'd be at the top notch

So please don't be weirded out by how I am
I'm trying to be normal with the best that I can
I'm awkward, shy but oh so very kind
and *you're the only girl who's in my mind
I like rhyming
Name of Teacher:*___________________________________________
Teacher/Course Evaluation: Fall Semester, Humanities Block (History & English) Hopi High School, Keams Canyon, Arizona, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

_______________ (1) This course was: (A) always different; never boring; sometimes even enjoyable (B) like a sleeping pill, an experience similar to having narcolepsy (C) like being sentenced to a maximum-security penitentiary for a semester; what did I do in a previous incarnation that stored up so much bad karma for me to deserve being here?   (D) a semester living under a totalitarian regime; this teacher would have fit right in with ******’s “Gestapo” (E) what I imagine it would have been like at Herot, Hrothgar’s royal mead hall in Beowulf, whenever the monster Grendel came calling.

_______________ (2) This teacher:  (A) knows how to teach, knows a great deal about this subject and others, creates a classroom atmosphere that resonates with teenagers and truly cares whether I show up ready to learn (B) never remembers my name, let alone my birthday (C) actually hates me and has made several attempts on my life (D) should have his license to teach revoked; can wiring my desk for electric shocks be legal?
(E) often wanders off, leaving us alone in the classroom for as long as 30 minutes at a time while out in the parking lot screaming about aliens and/or Bolsheviks.

_______________ (3) Compared to all other teachers I’ve had since kindergarten, this teacher: (A) is one of the best, certainly in the top 10% (B) has the worst personal hygiene; aren’t teachers required to bathe at least once a month? (C) has the least credibility; he tells me nothing but “lies, ****** lies and statistics” (D) frightens me the most, particularly whenever the moon waxes full (E) is obviously the one most in need of a good 12-step recovery program.

_______________ (4) This teacher’s grading system:   (A) is objective and reflects what I earn; not subjectively based on whether he likes my face or not (B) is based on a point system that is clearly explained and fairly administered (C) is based on assignments that are challenging but not impossibly difficult (D) includes opportunities to earn at least some extra credit (E) A, B, C & D (F) none of these; sometimes I think he pulls my grade out of his ***.

_____________
(5) If I could change one thing about this teacher or his class, I'd: (A) change nothing: this teacher belongs in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (B) insist that he use English in the classroom, not that "clicks and pops" sound-effect language he learned while backpacking in sub-Saharan Africa one summer (C) tear down that rice-paper-thin, cardboard wall separating his classroom from the one next door (D) demand that an FBI Trained and Certified Document Examiner review his BIA job application, teaching credential, college transcripts and fingerprint card (E) remove sheep and goats*.
James Rives Sep 2023
what is the benchmark or minimum
for telling someone, "i love you,"?
how many i miss yous
and i wish you were heres are enough,
even minutes after parting?

whatever the number is, **** it.
because my heart remembers to beat
and even attempts to soar with you
to heights new, unfound, unseen.

where the chittering of nearby birds
is both foreign and kind comfort
in our hands;
where oranges and strawberries grow
in tandem, vine over vine, root over root,
and fall into us, sweet and kind and lovely.

if i were to say it too soon, i'm afraid
i'd lose you, your wit, your smile,
dumb jokes and blazing blue eyes.
and by withholding, i risk combustion,
and an end to it all the same.

i love you.
I have never felt a love like this. It's unique and pure but I worry that I'm stupid and easily tricked.
My father was a philosopher, or liked to pretend as much.
He couldn’t look at the world for what it was, but rather what it represented.
“This tree isn’t just a tree,” he’d say,
“It’s a symbol of the wisdom of man,
growing until it’s cut away, stripped, and used for God knows what purposes.”
To me, it was just a wooden friend made for climbing.

There was a frozen lake near us he often gazed over while driving to the 7-11 for cigs.
He said it was a perfect image of impermanence:
a beautiful crystal sea with solid skin, soon to melt, and become a bathtub to wash the local compost clean.

My brother and I go sledding on our snow days.
If you don’t, well, it might as well be a weekend,
or a grading day,
or Flag Day.

We’d slide across that glassy plain on our bellies,
our hearts beating through the ice;
music for the fishes below.
It was in those days that I thought of my life as perfect,
and I realized all the possibilities that the fire of my youth could fuel.
Well, one day our hearts beat too fast,
or too strong,
or the fish wished to meet the musicians, or something happened for reasons which I still can’t come to terms with.
The glass… it shattered.
And my brother fell through the other side,
to dance with the herrings and sturgeons till he was all out of breath.
And he tired quickly of the dance.
And I wasn’t a strong enough partner to lead him off the dancefloor.

My father, when he heard the news of his son’s new hobby,
it was as though every book he ever read,
and every four-syllable word he ever knew,
and every overdrawn metaphor he ever spoke were all just a weird series of lies.
He swam into his bedroom, and through a blizzard of thrown pictures, sobs, and “*****” he calmed himself to stupor.


He went in the room my father, the intellectual, and came out as Roy, the sorrow-drunken spatter of roadside slush.
Whenever we pass the lake, he no longer comments on what it represents, but rather what it is:
“a ******-up graveyard for innocent little angels.”  
The world is no longer a set of symbols, but a tangible environment,  
though one he looks at through a lens of tears and amber bloodshots.  
My father is no longer a philosopher, but a poet, spitting out sonnets of regret and rage.  

And as for me, I haven’t really much to talk about.
I guess I’m sitting stagnant, frozen.  
I don’t want to be like my father, but I’m realizing it’s inevitable.
I haven’t felt anything genuine since his heart beat its last song.
Hell, I don’t even sled on snow days anymore.  
They might as well be a weekend,
or a grading day,
or Flag Day.
© David Clifford Turner, 2010

For more scrawls, head to: www.ramblingbastard.blogspot.com
Aly the Pear  Nov 2014
Depression
Aly the Pear Nov 2014
Depression
Enveloping darkness swallowing wholly
Confused family hurting daily
Unhappy memories haunting mercilessly
Concerned friends worrying quietly
Prospective future slipping quickly
Oblivious teachers grading harshly
Low self-esteem dropping endlessly
Understanding lover comforting gently
Frigid emptiness bellowing angrily
Lively peers ignoring unintentionally
Selfish
A "classonian" on depression
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2016
~for bd~

there is a well in our backyard,
a cooperative well of sorts,
for the water source is a
earth stream deep, an east-west latitudinal,
attitudinal canal,
well traversed, intercontinental and interoceanic,
belonging to no one, free to those who
drink with their eyes

given its diversity,
it's salty sweet earthy soiled provenance,
strike me strange, strikes me well,
its fiercest flavor is its
mundanity,
the plainest cool of tasteless, clear, fresh water,
so easy taken for granted

but therein lies the rub,
for the mundane is the gold vein,
from which we mine our greatest stories,
the best crumbs,
the mineral origins of our words,
to capture the gift of needed inspirational,
for our daily living hymnal
songbook

the aging parental care-taking
wisely and sadly seceded,
the golden child learns lessons of
illness and passing, renewal and replacement,
how to mourn and how to love anew,
when one pet goes, and another comes to
roost and roam in his youthful heart,
and a lover ages and so does she,
for tandem is the ever-changing, graying color of their
fierce attached tenacity

a professor supervises the household management,
grading student papers, grading life,
secretly writing love paeans to celebrate
what it's all about, the visible so oft ignored,
recorded, recored, reordered,
in the observatory of
bed crumb starry words

I,
a stranger never to be seen,
a million miles from the scene,
smile and weep, loving the shallow for its deep,
finding amazement in the complexity
that only humans have the capacity to commit,
all of us captains of the capital we store,
in the small hallmarks of every day living,
and in an overdue,
catchup e-transmission,
a well wish comes true,
a poem born,
a kindness to myself,
the best gift of and to,
those who are both,
well,
friends and strangers

who remind us that hope too,
is a
well

~~~~~
The Message

Hello Natty man....we are all well...but it has been a busy and difficult year, Mum finally went into residentail care, very busy at work, the golden boy grows in leaps and bounds, my surfer dude grows more grey hairs as do I....sadly there has been a shift change in the demigods of the house the little blue cat, got sick (bowel cancer)...and after much heartache..we made the decision to let him go with dignity and he was put to sleep...We are now presided over by a little tuxedo boy (still a devon rex)....whose energy is sometimes insurmountable....he and the golden boy have bonded....*

hope all is well your end
Take care...and be kind to you
I read a message, I write a poem...
Don Bouchard Oct 2018
Same old drudgery,
Papers fresh for grading;
Topics, seldom new,
If honestly presented,
At least encourage worth
In form, in format, in tradition.

Plagiarism creeps up,
Always shocking,
The unauthorized changing
Of voice, of tone, of diction,
Not unlike the sting of a ruthless needle,
The drip of a hollowed, poisoned fang,
The bite of frost, burning a tender cheek...
Sadly familiar, this strident pang.

All hope is lost.

Anger sets in,
Trust wilts,
Hope fades gray.

In plagiarism, the fool's truth lies;
To belie one's honor is to watch it die.
Proverbs 1:17 Surely in vain the nets are cast under the watching eyes of the birds...
Geno Cattouse Sep 2012
The old man said to me "son, timing is key"
I said, "old dude you look like a man who heard about rythym".
Old felines  like you come a dime  for a dozen, always poppin of yang about isms and schisms .

Naw fresh meat. This buds for you, If I really knew then what I thought that I knew
I wouldn't be grading your papers with exes and checks but I see in your eyes that your vision is short.
You think you hot **** but aint all that smart.

FYI pops I think that you reading me wrong.
You cant see my dimensions nor fade my intentions.

So you think they broke the mold. you have this thing down cold.
This has never been done before you.
Here ,wipe your nose.

Hey Senor senior if your so informed,then please pass along a few high value pearls.
How bout the one telling about what women want cause you really cleaned up in
the female department .

The old man just smiled and said "pearls before swine.
Just drop a few breadcrumbs to find your way back".

Off is the direction I want you to truck he said.
Don't  forget Wonder is the best kind of bread he said
You must be slow or just light in the head he said.

Yeah, whatever.
Andrew Rueter  Jun 2018
Walls
Andrew Rueter Jun 2018
My face blue
I race through
A misplaced zoo
Where disgrace grew
Into a mistake stew
Like the River Styx
Where people mix
Into a wall of bricks
That makes me sick

They steal my serenity
But when I look ahead of me
I see that I'll need them
To experience freedom
So I amass suitors
But I don't see them as sons or daughters
I see them as polluters
I see them as pirates and marauders

They see love as a doorway
To their own complacency
In order to see me more days
They take away my agency
Instead of aiding me
They start grading me
No longer elating me
They start deflating me

I shoot a missile
Of dismissal
Into the barricade
Of the bed I made
And keep sailing on
By flailing on
The floor
Begging for more

More people
More walls
Another sequel
Another fall
I have erected a maze
Where I've elected to graze
Deflecting their gaze
To enjoy wandering days

I experience happiness
Without their craftiness
But I begin to get lonely
My mouth starts foaming
I search to find ramparts
That can't part
Where landsharks
Eat the parked

Stuck searching
Perpetually perching
On the ledge
Of the wedge
Between myself and others
Looking for cover
I built protective walls
That became too tall
Morgan Milligan Jun 2012
Once upon a time,
I dare asked for preference on
Characters of fantasy.
I took a tally poll without mere thought
But then the deeply stored epiphany came later.
For if we are judging creatures of imagination then we must
Be grading stereotypes.
We gave each only a few characteristics
And in turn labeled our minds restrictive.
In the world of zombies and unicorns we can create anything we want.
In the realm of fantasy,
Everything and anything exist.
The question is unanswerable.

— The End —