As Chloe Weibelt, Poet Laureate, prepares for graduation she creates one last poetry activity for all of us to participate in. Earlier this spring, Chloe (CRW) engaged our school with “Lines of Light” which is featured in the yearbook, and the Gratitude Box which was part of Open House, as well as the launch of her tenure, “Fresh Perspectives”, which was a blackout poetry activity. These poems are in the display case outside the main office.
The Last Poetry Project is called “The Way I’m Wired” and asks writers to reflect on their memories of thoughts, feelings, behaviors and habits. In this process, the writer is invited to write in a way that will give them the freedom to be who they are and to express themselves in any free form of writing. These are autobiographical narratives weaved into prose, free verse, or lyrical poems. Here are the poems by which Gladiator poets declare, This is How We are Wired:
The Way I’m Wired by CRW
I see speckles and static as I stare up in bed
the nonexistent tik tok of my invisible
Clock, rhymes and gloves with the drumming sound
Of my head.
It’s music
Tik tok,
Boom,
Thump thump
There’s lots of sounds. Too many even
An overwhelming swirl of colors, carried on wind
I wish to pull blankets over my head, drown
Peacefully in the heat of my own breath and staticky
Darkness
But there are no blankets for me to hide under
No stuffed animals to protect me from the whispering
Darkness rising like smoke from under my bed
No longer a child finding safe zones from the
Monsters in darkness.
No longer a child protected by stuffed bears and
Fuzzy blankets.
How I wish there was more time.
More times of flying through skies.
How I wish there was more time for freedom.
How I wish I was young.
For Me by Isabella Pena
I’m doing this for me.
I wake up.
I think for me.
I’m living life for me,
I struggle, I learn,
But at the end it’s for me,
For no one else but ME.
Life may be hard,
But those challenges are for Me,
For me, to learn, to understand,
I forgive for me. I forget for me,
Not for you, but for Me!
So many colors. Such little joy.
“Self Love” by Lynsey Valencia
Self Love is Caring and loving
Yourself for being You, finging
Stuff you enjoy about yourself,
Loving your flaws and
Embracing
WiReD by Rocket Girl
Spilling the T in salty tears
When I think of how I’m wired
I feel weird
I am woeful and worried
My feet will want to walk to where
My loved ones are sleeping
And I shall go on living
Pablo Neruda was a poet’s poet
I wonder if he sleeps
I used to sleepwalk.
Tony wrote a song about it
“Sleepwalker, please…
Wake up from your sleep before
You die…”
I’m not in a mood to talk
About the dying or the dead,
But we walk together in dreams
Hope that we can still learn
From each other
I call on them to help
Like Maya Angelou
A blessing, a rainbow, in a cloud
O Chaplain, my Chaplain, it’s been a long time
And how, for crying out loud
I’m tired, and when I
Sink into that concrete word
I feel wired, abstract,
And matter of fact.
That’s not that, but this is:
The world of the walking wired
Is a Gilbert story
I am in it.
Can you dig it? In it to win it.
There is no winning in Wired
Like no crying in baseball
Tears might spark the wires
To ignite
My thoughts become feelings
Reeling them in, in,
Really feeling the history of
The mystery that is my system
Of believing, and my behavior?
More sugar, less salt.
That is all.
A Living Breathing Moment by CRW
All around I see flowers.
I see green trees and bird nests through
Metal.
I see life all around me.
I see every breath I take in the Winter-
The rush of air in my lungs as I run through
Summer and Spring.
I see the breaths of crows and pigeons
In concrete streets. The chirps of birds I never meet.
I hear joy and laughter of those around me
Children playing in streets
As I sit there on the stone cold bench
I realize in this world of metal. There’s more touch.
That though there is stale smells metal
Sights. There is beauty all around.
There is a forest inside me. Birds in my
Throat, rivers in my veins. Lightning in my nerves and
Structure in my bones. My red flesh is love, not hate.
I am a child of my mother
Mother Earth.
