#commencement - Hello Poetry

the commencement is “will” and the graduation is “hope” ~~~~~ will poem time day love life write poetry poems man long good eyes human heart word best poet body better days place read mind years mine night god soul poets light sun woman single writing true white easy keep living water work lost find forever hands daily city answer summer head face things morning hard sleep tears left live thy rest full year moment free real deep knowing great three children inside hand longer bed ago making child men born skin red call early sweet **** small poetic side brain truth return matter times black speak chest thinking thing lives course oft kind today simple writ hear blood young slow feel tongue pain bad friends sea fall blue hours lines high wrote dreams people future tho fresh smile perfect till open sky room thought written death leave quiet voice nat coffee share sure question late street coming earth hope 11:38 AM on Tuesday, February 24, 2025

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Feb 24

Feb 24, 2026 at 11:07 AM UTC

nat-lipstadt

These are my words, per HP

the commencement is “will” and the graduation is “hope” ~~~~~ will poem time day love life write poetry poems man long good eyes human heart word best poet body better days place read mind years mine night god soul poets light sun woman single writing true white easy keep living water work lost find forever hands daily city answer summer head face things morning hard sleep tears left live thy rest full year moment free real deep knowing great three children inside hand longer bed ago making child men born skin red call early sweet **** small poetic side brain truth return matter times black speak chest thinking thing lives course oft kind today simple writ hear blood young slow feel tongue pain bad friends sea fall blue hours lines high wrote dreams people future tho fresh smile perfect till open sky room thought written death leave quiet voice nat coffee share sure question late street coming earth hope 11:38 AM on Tuesday, February 24, 2025

58

sad, and heart-wrenching. you don't know how else to describe it. you're approaching graduation, and slowly starting to see your campus, your home away from home (that eventually became home), through the eyes of an alumna. Slowly, yet instantly, your lasts begin to accumulate. Last coffee & pastry from the arts cafe. Last paper printed from the library. Last haphazard multiple choice question selection. You picked "c" again because it has always felt safe. And don't even get started on the last moments in your dorm. Your last classes. Last walks around the lakes. The best and worst thing about lasts is oftentimes, you are not aware (fully at least) of the true finality of these experiences. But that's what commencement is for... right? Not directly, but sort of. Because commencement means 'beginning', not 'end'. We talk about all that we have done to get to this faithful graduation day, and it is good that the end is about beginning, but even the beginning ends. So that space between the beginning of the end and the end of the end is quite strange. You realize you will no longer attend school here, or maybe even anywhere, starting in just a few days. Yet you're walking through the student center listening to a song you listened to when you walked around campus for the very first time. Except everything seemed faster then. Now, it all seems slow, perhaps even frozen in time. Years ago, you didn't know the ins and outs of how this place was laid out; how it functioned. You didn't see fuzzy memories at certain tables and buildings, and in certain nondescript corners. You couldn't hear the ghostly 'Hello!'s echoing, familiar voices greeting you that now haunt the sidewalks instead of traveling along them. You are no longer in the moment when you started to call this place home. Except it's your last day of classes, and you've been here quite a while, but it is, in fact, still home. But something is fading, unclear in this space between spaces The faces aren't familiar anymore, and years ago, that would be something you jokingly wished for, perhaps just to be left alone so you didn't have to pause your music. But now, you long for that closeness in some way. You'd find comfort in that sort of chaos. And maybe you already started your post-grad job before graduation because you needed to distract yourself from the fact that it is all so liminal. a place between places, spaces between spaces, a life lived between lives. Where you're able to recognize that though your worst times were hosted there, your best times also were. and maybe it all wasn't truly just a well thought-out blur, because you found so much safety here, and learned to create that for yourself. Without this place, it would've been tough to deal with what had been dealt. This place lifted you up, showed you what you could do, and you created a life and love for yourself that you're starting to see now that you're through. It hurts, yes, I know: to say goodbye to this chapter. but it remains part of you, now and thereafter. side note from the future: don't rush into things, just listen to yourself, because you are all you have and the rest is what you have felt.

0

Jul 27, 2025

Jul 27, 2025 at 7:09 PM UTC

grayroxanne

commendcement: ode to new

sad, and heart-wrenching. you don't know how else to describe it. you're approaching graduation, and slowly starting to see your campus, your home away from home (that eventually became home), through the eyes of an alumna. Slowly, yet instantly, your lasts begin to accumulate. Last coffee & pastry from the arts cafe. Last paper printed from the library. Last haphazard multiple choice question selection. You picked "c" again because it has always felt safe. And don't even get started on the last moments in your dorm. Your last classes. Last walks around the lakes. The best and worst thing about lasts is oftentimes, you are not aware (fully at least) of the true finality of these experiences. But that's what commencement is for... right? Not directly, but sort of. Because commencement means 'beginning', not 'end'. We talk about all that we have done to get to this faithful graduation day, and it is good that the end is about beginning, but even the beginning ends. So that space between the beginning of the end and the end of the end is quite strange. You realize you will no longer attend school here, or maybe even anywhere, starting in just a few days. Yet you're walking through the student center listening to a song you listened to when you walked around campus for the very first time. Except everything seemed faster then. Now, it all seems slow, perhaps even frozen in time. Years ago, you didn't know the ins and outs of how this place was laid out; how it functioned. You didn't see fuzzy memories at certain tables and buildings, and in certain nondescript corners. You couldn't hear the ghostly 'Hello!'s echoing, familiar voices greeting you that now haunt the sidewalks instead of traveling along them. You are no longer in the moment when you started to call this place home. Except it's your last day of classes, and you've been here quite a while, but it is, in fact, still home. But something is fading, unclear in this space between spaces The faces aren't familiar anymore, and years ago, that would be something you jokingly wished for, perhaps just to be left alone so you didn't have to pause your music. But now, you long for that closeness in some way. You'd find comfort in that sort of chaos. And maybe you already started your post-grad job before graduation because you needed to distract yourself from the fact that it is all so liminal. a place between places, spaces between spaces, a life lived between lives. Where you're able to recognize that though your worst times were hosted there, your best times also were. and maybe it all wasn't truly just a well thought-out blur, because you found so much safety here, and learned to create that for yourself. Without this place, it would've been tough to deal with what had been dealt. This place lifted you up, showed you what you could do, and you created a life and love for yourself that you're starting to see now that you're through. It hurts, yes, I know: to say goodbye to this chapter. but it remains part of you, now and thereafter. side note from the future: don't rush into things, just listen to yourself, because you are all you have and the rest is what you have felt.

52

<!> Four Irises tall & gallant, looking though slighted worn out, a tad bedraggled they are springtime survivor stragglers of the Great Spring Weather Battle. living in an open trench, battle conditions, wind-whipped by constant strong breezes, raked by intermittent machine gun rain, familiar weapons of the “handover” season loyal guardians of their pinpoint position, remaining on duty, standing at attention, dignified amidst the serene, nearly summer, now, accepting quietude & gratitude of surround soundings arrow-straight, in dress uniforms of royally purple, four lead a cohort of unbloomed green fellows, protecting their charge, an ancient marker of time, rusted-green bronze sundial, symbol of continuity these four, boon companions to human and animal, shall persist long after I cease to dabble in this art, they greet their admirers in full regalia, every year, long, long may they live, die and be yet reborn! here, in place, when we arrived four decades ago, a tiny forever, changelings heading a processional of the summer season, greeting all with a simple story of constance of change, of beauty, leading our Summertime Commencement Exercises May 26 ~ 27, 2023

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May 27, 2023

May 27, 2023 at 4:55 PM UTC

whereshelter

Summertime Commencement Exercises

<!> Four Irises tall & gallant, looking though slighted worn out, a tad bedraggled they are springtime survivor stragglers of the Great Spring Weather Battle. living in an open trench, battle conditions, wind-whipped by constant strong breezes, raked by intermittent machine gun rain, familiar weapons of the “handover” season loyal guardians of their pinpoint position, remaining on duty, standing at attention, dignified amidst the serene, nearly summer, now, accepting quietude & gratitude of surround soundings arrow-straight, in dress uniforms of royally purple, four lead a cohort of unbloomed green fellows, protecting their charge, an ancient marker of time, rusted-green bronze sundial, symbol of continuity these four, boon companions to human and animal, shall persist long after I cease to dabble in this art, they greet their admirers in full regalia, every year, long, long may they live, die and be yet reborn! here, in place, when we arrived four decades ago, a tiny forever, changelings heading a processional of the summer season, greeting all with a simple story of constance of change, of beauty, leading our Summertime Commencement Exercises May 26 ~ 27, 2023

26

each of my poems is a commencent address, depending on the day, the time or place, either an ending or a beginning a moment unique, we mark a changing, by tossing/losing a hat we’ll never wear again, or picking up a shovel to bury a parent in earth and casket we cannot share an operating room, shiny clean, with mercurial microbes awaiting a new arriving inhabitant, to defend and attack, or bidding farewell to a elder child born blood-deformed, whose wingspan shortened by virtue of our own gene-rosity commence the commencement. take the iron from the grotesque irony, the steel from the stealing away seconds, the hum from the humble mumbling, a disbelieving refusal, the tears from the skin-rent tearing just beginning a speech for the occasion and ending with a prayer standing, by a gravestone when you awake today, prepare a commencement or a commence-not address

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May 15, 2019

May 15, 2019 at 5:16 PM UTC

no-truth-login

each of my poems is a commence-not address

each of my poems is a commencent address, depending on the day, the time or place, either an ending or a beginning a moment unique, we mark a changing, by tossing/losing a hat we’ll never wear again, or picking up a shovel to bury a parent in earth and casket we cannot share an operating room, shiny clean, with mercurial microbes awaiting a new arriving inhabitant, to defend and attack, or bidding farewell to a elder child born blood-deformed, whose wingspan shortened by virtue of our own gene-rosity commence the commencement. take the iron from the grotesque irony, the steel from the stealing away seconds, the hum from the humble mumbling, a disbelieving refusal, the tears from the skin-rent tearing just beginning a speech for the occasion and ending with a prayer standing, by a gravestone when you awake today, prepare a commencement or a commence-not address

20

Release me from the present so i can jump full stop into the future even if it scares me at least it's better than this unbalanced equilibrium

0

May 4, 2016

May 4, 2016 at 12:54 PM UTC

autumn-whipple

The future

Release me from the present so i can jump full stop into the future even if it scares me at least it's better than this unbalanced equilibrium

9