MY ROOM

My palace
My sanctuary
My home pitch
My Room


Messy for some
Clean for me
Too loud for some
Quiet for me
Too warm for some
Just right for me


Where I’m Happy
Where I’m sad


A place to work
A place to play
A place to hangout
A place…


Where I dream
Where I’m cozy
And safe


But who is really safe
In this crazy mixed up world


My palace
My sanctuary
My home pitch My Room

Six Million Scars

Into the Heart
Between fields and seas
Hard to imagine
What happened here


Men blessed by heaven
With stories untold
Unable to distinguish
Between the chapters of pain


They lived with
The scars they carried
Despite
The Men with Guns

An exciting addition to our Blog family!

Dear Students,

I'm excited to announce that we have a new mentor to share with and learn from. You may remember Nomi, a grade 12 student at Lord Byng High School, from her helpful comments on some of your work earlier this year. Well, she's back with us and has sent me some of her work from the past few years. She has also offered to give writing advice or comment on your poems as you post them. As you'll see from reading her work, she is a talented poet and has the background to give some solid advice to all you budding writers. Let her know what you think of her work.



The Killer Finding Spell is a poem that I worked on for Creative Writing class. The assignment was to expand on something we wrote in our journals, and I chose to turn mine into a poem.


The Killer Finding Spell



From within I pull the song

The one I know so well

It's easy and soft

A spoken spell



I can hear my voice

Drifting through the crowd

It's calm and cool

It's raging and loud



The burning in my skin

Is killing my hands

I'm craving the cold

And silence in the stands.



Ablaze in the soul

Under the skin

I'm heating up quickly

Coming up from within



It's gripping me tight

I've got no control

The spell around me

Is taking its' toll



I'm getting lost quickly

There are sounds all around

There I've got it

The target's been found



I'm grabbing a hold of it

I won't let it go

The waves it's sending

Are moving so slow



All that's left now

Is to sign its' defeat

I only wish my heart

Had just one more beat.

A Sunset Year is just a poem I wrote when I was going through a sunset phase. I actually wrote it in Grade 7, not too far off from your students now. It mostly focuses on repetition.

A Sunset Year



The golden sun,

Was bright and brilliant,

In the evening sky,

An evening sky,

The evening sky.



The sky of pink and peach and purple,

With blue and white in the distance,

Shaded by the fading sun,

A fading sun,

The fading sun.



The only sound made there,

Was the screeching of bikes and cars,

Of clicks and flashes,

And the wind and the waves,

As everybody stared,

They stared,

We stared.



I ask myself why I can't describe it,

There just aren't powerful enough words,

We hear and use the words we can,

But never will describe it,

Describe it majestically,

Describe it perfectly.



Sparkling on the dazzling sea,

The glittering rays,

Of sunlight days,

Fade away,

Away,

Today.



I feel as though,

The undertow could take me,

I'm light as air,

Bedazzled by its beauty,

Its beauty,

Our beauty.



As it fades I shed a tear,

Then I wait another year,

Another year,

A good year,
A sunset year.

Knowing You is a poem I wrote in Grade 10 when my grandfather died. Unfortunately, I did not have the courage to read it at his memorial service, but it feels like a good memory. I also realized that many of your students have written poems on some of their own family members, so I will contribute this to them.


Knowing You



I didn't really know you

Not the way I wanted to.

All I knew was from

Others' stories and memories,

So I didn't really know you.

I have this one memory,

Where I'm very young,

And you smile at me.

You're proud of me,

And we understand

Each other.

I tried to learn your mother tongue,

So I could get to know you.

I didn't learn fast enough.

I feel like I cheated

Because I wasn't there

To see you when

I probably should have.

But I'm here today,

To honour only you.

I'm here to pay

My respects to you,

And only you.

I'm here to say good-bye

And to get to know you,

And only you.

I wrote What I am the same day I found out my grandfather died. It was a very emotional time for me. It's a little dark, and it was meant to be lyrics for a song, so the beat is somewhat rhythmic. Some of your students might enjoy it.


What I Am



You have to let me be

Let me be grumpy

Let me be sarcastic

Let me be snarky

Let me be cynical

You have to let me be

Who I need to be



You watch me

Watch me cry in movies

Watch me cry in shows

But you never see

The tears that count the most



You have to let me be

Let me be grumpy

Let me be sarcastic

Let me be snarky

Let me be cynical

You have to let me be

Who I need to be



In the room all dark

I sit on the floor

My tears leak out

As I rock back and forth

I cry like this

When no ones looking

When I've lost control

When I'm breaking

When I don't want to

I need to



You have to let me be

Let me be grumpy

Let me be sarcastic

Let me be snarky

Let me be cynical

You have to let me be

Who I need to be



But you won't see

'cause you're blind

You won't hear

'cause you're deaf

You won't touch

'cause you can't

You won't taste

what I have.

Because I have me

And that's all

That's all



You have to let me be

Let me be grumpy

Let me be sarcastic

Let me be snarky

Let me be cynical

You have to let me be

Who I need to be



Because I have me

And that's all

That's all

An Accident was actually entered in the annual summer poetry contest that is held by the Poetry Institute of Canada. The PIC uses all the submissions to create an anthology and all participants may purchase a book at a lower rate than the rest of the country. This might be something you want to look into for your students because it's a really cool experience to have your work published. I submitted this in the summer of Grade 6, so I would have been in the same grade as your own students. An Accident was written in response to the road racing awareness week that was going on at my school.
An Accident



If you talk to a certain teen

They may describe a blood-filled scene

Somewhere where a car has crashed

Somewhere where a life was smashed

We are sure now that it was a teenager

But nobody really, truly could wager

The recklessness of that teens' life

That teen was driving on a very thin knife

They clearly did not understand

The skinniness of that strand

The strand of life on which they lived

Did this person ever give,

A kind of love you cannot see?

How will we know that teen will never be.

I have other poems that I can submit to you if you'd like. I just made a random selection of these as samples of different points in my life. I have a few poems from Grade 6 and 7 that I can send you, and also some more recent ones.

Hopefully your students will enjoy these!

Look forward to your student's reactions,

~Nomi, Grade 12, Lord Byng Secondary

Group Poems

Let's get those stanzas in by Thursday, everyone. Remember that we are looking for a four line stanza about you in an aa bb rhyme scheme. Easy to do with the nice reward of being part of our togetherness puzzle display. Blog it as a new post or attach it to Nini's original.

Response from Adina

I enjoyed the different perspectives in this poem of what the cat really is and what the cat thinks he is or could be. At the beginning of the poem the cat is a curled up ball on the rug, but inside the cat's mind he is becoming a vicious loin searching for pray. The cat on the mat is tame and mellow but the loin is a ferocious and ruthless creature. I enjoyed this because it connects to life. There is usually a difference between what you are or what you are capable of and what you think you are or think you think you can do.

-Adina

Response to Hangman

The first time I read the poem Hangman I really did not get it, but after I read it a couple of times I understood it better. After reading Hangman, I answered a couple of the questions but went back to the poem to see if I was right. The poem had lots of cadence and sensory images and had lots of rhymes and similes. The poem had 7 or 10 stanzas and had good descriptions, but was quite sad. The only thing I did not get was why the hangman was killing innocent people that had done nothing wrong. Why didn't anyone stop this man from killing the young, the old, and the children? Maybe they were scared to tell because the Hangman might come after them. Was there nobody to stand up to him and do the right thing?