#parenting poems on Hello Poetry

Antoinette G Oct 2015

When I was younger
My mother told me that my
father was a superhero
That he was off saving the world from bad people
When in all reality he was off starting another family

When I was younger
My mother would work day and night
Just so I could have a happy life
But I always noticed that he wasn't there
Not for a birthday,christmas,
or first day of a new school year

When I was younger
My mother would tell me all these stories
About how she had her life planned out
Was going to do something amazing
Until she had me
Though she assured me I was more special than all
those things

When I was younger
My mother was a role model to me
She showed me what a real women was suppose to be
She never let me forget how much she loved me
Always there with a smile or a kiss
A shoulder to cry on, a hand to grasp when I felt weak

When I was younger
My mother would sing me to sleep
And if I had a bad dream
She'd crawl into my tiny little bed to sleep with me
Holding me tightly and letting me know
She wouldn't ever let me go

When I was younger
My mother would tell me
I could be anything in the world that I wanted to be
Even took me to go see
all the weird medical stuff that interested me
Bought me models and helped me
to learn that knowledge is power

When I was younger
My mother would sit with me for hours
After a hard day of work and listen to me chatter
About politics and news and all types of matters
That shouldn't have concerned a little girl
But my mom knew that her little girl
was going to change the world

When I was younger
My mother would encourage me to be myself
Helped me up when I fell
Dusting me off and sending me on my way
Knowing that I'd be okay
As long as she was there to make everything better

When I was younger
My mother would hang up every award
and display every trophy
Was there for every spelling bee,
chess tournament,
speech contest,
science fair,
concert,
art show,
dance routine, and
parade
Cheering me on
Proud of what her baby had done

When I was younger
And even now that I'm older
My mother has and always will be a constant in my life
Someone who never let's me down
Can turn my moods around
A shoulder
A pillar
A model
A fan
She has always done the best she can
And who could ask for more than that
Not me
When I was younger

a poem for my mom

#love #life #mom #daughter #parenting

Brent Kincaid Oct 2015

LIFELONG LEGACY

The ringing of a telephone
A simple knock when I’m alone.
Someone just calling my name
And screaming seem the same.
A loud noise when I am sleeping,
Someone throwing open my door,
A car backfiring close by home,
The sounds of steps across the floor.

These are the normal sounds
The symphony of people living.
These sounds don’t normally
Carry terror along with the giving
Like someone living in a war zone
A place with mass invading troops.
They are isolated common things
Unless they arrive in huge groups.

Yet these things still bring me
A painful pounding in my heart
And it goes on for too long
From the moment it starts.
It is the gift of abandonment
Of childhood neglect and abuse
And is viewed by most adults
As ridiculous and abstruse.

But many survivors of childhood
Of threat and pain and fear
Will tell you the horror remains
After the passage of many years.
It has to do with the inner self
Being robbed of a basic trust
Of life itself by their care givers,
By God himself, if you must.

Because there feels a solid knowing
That truly, deep inside the child
There is nobody to save them
From creatures near and wild.
Nobody will come to rescue us
When the bad things come to bite
And everybody knows they come
In the deepest part of the night.

#poetry #abuse #neglect #child #fears #bedtime #inner #parenting #nightime

Brent Kincaid Oct 2015

PARENTING 2015

Dress your girls
To be a street walker
Teach your boys
To become trash talkers.
Why should they undergo
The first twelve years or so
With no solid understanding
Of prostitution and manhandling?

So paint her face
And shorten her dress.
Copy the working girls
Make her an immoral mess.
All that is important is
The approval of her friends.
Don’t worry about where this
Look of impropriety ends.

You boys wear chains
And motorcycle gang wear
So that you can recognize him
In juvenile jail cells everywhere.
Let him get tattoos young
Of skulls and snakes and chains.
Why should you worry about
The future criminal that remains?

Peer acceptance rules
Parents certainly do not.
Look at all the free time
You suddenly have got.
You can set your kid down
In front of the television
And turn them into totally
Nearly useless men and women.

#poetry #neglect #child #fashion #parenting #brent #kincaid

Brent Kincaid Oct 2015

CHANGELING

Pitiful child, born by chance
Into a house that was haunted.
Quite the shock and surprise;
Ghost of Christmas Child Unwanted.
There he was with all his need
The wreck of so many plans
Of weekends movies and bars.
Too much for Mom to understand.

Pretend for the neighbors, then
Because that’s why you wed.
It was better to be pregnant.
Seen as gay? Worse than dead.
Or seen as weird, crazy, strange
Or in any other way un-weddable
Was something horrifying to them
And sure to turn out regrettable.

Pitiful child, grew up in the way.
Nothing to hope for at end of day.
Food, shelter, clothing, and told
That’s all kid is entitled to anyway.
None of this mollycoddling;
Nothing more, no true nurture.
What else could come about
But a dismal hope for the future?

It’s all about the relationship
Between the kid’s Mom and Dad
And anything that draws focus
Means the kid is being bad.
So, beat the kid again, slap him
Make him go without his meal.
Make him understand that rage
Is something expected and real.

Pitiful child, has no more trust
That the world will ever relent
And make a place for him to be
Until fires of hell are all spent.
Armageddon itself can come
And he knows that his parents
Will still be there to point out
It’s because he is totally errant.

#poetry #abuse #abandonment #neglect #child #parenting #brent #kincaid

Daniel Brian L Hong Oct 2015

Mother, your daughter

Guide her. However, expect that she will consider your advice apathetically—it's an inescapable affair. She will think that she has it all figured out and you're not one to lecture her on this matter. And then, only then when her heart is cut into ribbons will she realize that your voice was sound, only then, will she come to you for insight. That is, if she's even brave enough to talk to you about it. Be vigilant, instill sound teaching, unbendable values, and pray that our Holiness will escort her to the right man.

#love #life #mom #daughters #mothers #parenting

Brent Kincaid Sep 2015

DING **** SCHOOL

They badgered me, berated me.
They beat me and they hated me.
They seemed to want me to die
Too soon, then, so did I.

I was different, and that was the reason.
Too many saw that as a form of treason.

I had to adhere to the boundaries
That were set for us artificially
They had no reference to reality;
More to some kind of elite tyranny.

And, I still find it horribly strange
That very little has changed.
The rules are still very much
Incredibly socially out of touch.

Strive to be elite or be beaten
And ultimately, almost literally eaten
By the swarm of mindless fools
That go on defending the rules

That allow children to be thugs
And, come to school to sell drugs;
That let the criminals escape
And, turn a blind eye to ****
And abuse and battering
But keep the ******* clattering
At PTA, school board and council meetings
More concerned with politics
Than the real-time subjects
Such as kids afraid of attending
Because the battlefield is never ending.

#poetry #school #bullying #bigotry #schools #disinterest #parenting #faculty #boards #systemic

Bernice Mendoza Sep 2015

Childhood Memories

Childhood Memories

Summer ended with a blast

Getting ready for school is a task

Mommies shopping in a dash

Making impressive school ware her tasked

fall colors, hints of yellow, red, orange

Trickling down the path

New clothes with colors matched,

Pencils, papers, and notebooks all in the best

Smells of crayons and falling leaves

Scents of summers past

© Bernice Mendoza, 8 years ago
Fall
Written September 17th, 2006

#fall #summer #children #mothers #parenting #seasonal

Brent Kincaid Sep 2015

SIMPLE CHOICES

It seems I’ve always been dyslexic
But, I really didn’t know.
I just discovered this about myself
About a year ago.
It was a matter of some bedevilment
To deal with left and right
Up and down, on and off, and more
Excepting day and night.

Opposites like yes or no, black or white,
Were never easy or fun.
Then the days of computers came along
With their trials of zero and one.
It’s a basic lack of understanding things
At a minimal kind of level.
It always seemed I was forever lost
Between the sea and the devil.

I began to realize how deep the effect
Ran within my learning curve.
It was more than just a simple matter
Of which way I would swerve
When riding a bike or driving a car;
I could never drive in Kent.
I would invariably choose the wrong way
When the road was forked or bent.

I don’t take any of this in any light way,
It helps me to understand
Having problems in my studies long ago,
To piece together strand by strand
The insults and the teasing I underwent
When I made the wrong choices.
I can now put to rest my sense of doubt
That stems from chiding voices.

It was such a subtle thing, and back then,
In the methods of long ago,
The parents and the teachers muddled on
Because they really didn’t know
That many of us were not ignoramuses
We just had an uphill fight
We had a dilemma in equal opposites
Like in and out or left and right.

#poetry #education #parenting #dyslexia #brent #diagnosing #kincaid

Robbert van Dongen Aug 2015

Manager to Mother (Spoken word)

She said I want to be a mother.

These words froze me.

She was an old manager of mine. When I'd spend my days on the phone, sold products like stones thrown at homes of customers whose windows were only mildly less valuable than the stones I broke them with...My manager looked bored, So I asked her... "What would you rather be doing than this?" she said "I want to be a mother."

At her managers post she earns more than most but would rather play host to...a baby girl or boy, trade orders for toys, she'd write work programs for her maternity like vows on how somehow... She and her partner would raise a baby.

I asked her... "That woman you're with... Do you love her?"... Yes.

I couldn't find the words to articulate how I felt so I told her what she said make me feel like the opposite of my heart breaking.

I don't know much of her past. But with me having more unexpected oddities than anything you can purchase for less than 73p from BnM bargains I know how hard it can be to be anything less than normal... And despite how far we've come in accepting women who love women or men who love men, I wonder how many people have told her... She couldn't be a mother without a father around. Whatever deep-rooted bigoted or religious grounds they may have found, it's not an excuse to put you down. They'll turn their feelings into frowns wear their ignorance like crowns and do everything they can to prevent you wearing a wedding gown.

You wanna know what I think.

Love requires patience, and patience is a liver. It can handle a lot of toxins and forgive a lot of poisonings, but overload it and it will die. For that reason... I went through puberty without a dad around. I had one war monument of a woman to ensure that I would grow to be a man who wouldn't poison livers. That compassion would be my arrows and respect would be my quiver. I'd send shivers to the spines of anyone who dared me to be anything less than everything they could see and... That I'd be a boy to be proud of. A woman and a man gave me bricks and cement, but only one woman helped me build a home in me... So imagine what two can do. It's such an outdated cliche just because you're gay doesn't mean you can't raise kids the right way.

I mean... Do you think two grown men can't change a *****? Can't stitch love and care into the clothes that child would wear, they pull out the hair stressing about the same questions that a straight dad would...How warm should this bottle be? Is it normal for him to eat this much? Is now a good age to have the talk? You can be a child's guardian but father or mother is a title that must be earned and with no doubt I believe you'll tick every box.

You've been mum to this office floor for more years than I've even spent in employment. Your throat holds the best kind of resume that no one can takeaway, and when you make the transition from manager to mother... I know your child will be loved like no other.

#mother #performance #growth #slam #blankverse #parenting #homosexuality

Irate Watcher Aug 2015

Reckless

You say I'm "reckless."
I take the subway alone at night
And walk past alleyways
I bike without a helmet
and accept rides from strangers.
I travel alone
to faraway places
with governments
America has flagged
and stay with strangers
I met on airplanes.
I have had casual ***
with lots of men,
I get my heart broken
from those who don't give a ****.

You say I'm "reckless."
My apartment is in a rent controlled complex with sneakers
stuck on the wrought iron fence.
I have water and electricity,
but not internet.
My neighbor was
in a hollywood gang
back in the day
The rest speak Spanish.
I find myself justifying
to you it's temporary,
but secretly am upset that
it will be torn down
just as I finish decorating.

You say I'm naive
when I say there is no evil —
just broken people.
It is people like you
who break them.
You say I'm idealistic
when I don't feed the system.
Why not eat the same rotation cause
it's efficient. *******, daughter!
Follow the recipe!
You say I'm "reckless,"
but I am just living,
and you are a scorpion
poised to attack
anyone who turns over
the rocks you live under.

When you say I'm "reckless,"
I flashback to moments
I'd never sting you with.
Like the time I opened
the window screen
and wondered how far
the fall would be,
crouched upon
a second story balcony.

No, I am not "reckless!"
I just can't understand
The point of fearing death
Or pain
Or suffering
The best art
is created by the ill-content,
the gonzo
the sociopath.
So why not let them live?
Please...just let me live!
Cause I can't take
your eyebrows raised
and the turned-down corners
of your pursed lips,
fearing I am "reckless."
Worried sleepless.
Your puffy purple eyes,
assuming I am floundering,
repulsed by marriage or a salary.
You should just accept
I will never have social security.
As a child...
you taught me I could be anything,
but frowned when I said I liked poetry.
To you, anything meant
a corporate ingenuity
To you, warriors
work hard and succeed.
They needn't take risks,
just business classes.
You wanted to pay for them
and then dine at
an overpriced restaurant afterward.
But I prefer the Bolivian markets.
I want to take you,
but you say it's dangerous
and you'd be rude
to the waitresses.

I know, when you say
that I'm "reckless,"
you are protecting —
a supportive parent.
But saying I am "reckless"
is starting to become overbearing.
You can stop now.
Cause you wont.
Stop it.
You will not **** my instincts,
only augment my rebellion.
You will not make me
in your image 'cause
I don't want to be like you —
Complacent in a bubbled,
grass-fed existence —
cows may live in comfort
but all they do is
pollute the environment.
The day I fear
is not your judgement,
but the day I stop living
and just say people are "reckless."
Even though I never
talk with anyone different.

No, I am not "reckless."
I ride the bus
and forget my headphones
I meet strangers
who become fast friends.
I learn about a world
filled with joy and happiness,
and pain and suffering,
and I love it ALL.
And I will continue to love
all the "reckless" things too,
just as much as you love me
when you tell me:
"Now, don't be reckless."

#love #fear #joy #reckless #risk #parenting #theworld