Ok maybe not pretty. But apropo.
Proud of those Puyallup Digital Learning Graduates!
Her hand went up and reached
toward my smile,
the criss-crossedd steel fencing
halted her progress and divided us
in two seperate world.
Student and Teacher.
The teacher's heart soared to see the wide smile and earnest eyes
that she did not know she missed.
Happy to see her.
This is why she teaches,
and for one day, Alyssa
made the teacher smile.
To feel needed is the thing
the human thing
and so
who was it that made this teacher
want to
scale the fence and
destroy the barrier between them:
Students and Teacher?
It was Alyssa
CLR May 2013
The Vietnam war, it is said
was much maligned, as
is the last class of the day,
where shouts meet
shoulders, shrugged and
with lids heavy, time stops
for thirty-five sixteen year olds
and one forty nine year old,
both liberated from the hallways,
like unused textbooks, all,
with laughter or tears our only choice.
Clr 2012
We were definitely reading Hamlet when I wrote this one to my favorite class:
One charming smile,
one loving heart, one sound was ours
right from the start.
A bit of you
and you and you
all come together in this wild stew
of placid lives with
torpid tales
of an afterlife with gentle veils.
A steady beat of
the helix is here.
It binds us fast,
it holds us dear.
Clr 2012
Kenzie leaves behind a
little bit of glitter, every
time she travels through a day.
The little girl grows into a powerhouse,
Brown hair pulls her head back
and turns her focus from toys and boys
to leading the way to
the future.
CLR 3/13
Alex lives inside a place
and there he'll always stay.
It is the place that knows,
'by god' that everything's ok.
His smile is reluctant, yes,
but it gives his bent away,
Alex has a heart of gold,
and army songs of yesterday.
A bugle plays from faraway
just calling out his name.
He will follow and obey
for everybody's gain.
Thank you Alex.
CLR 2013
A smile I can count on
Chelsea has,
and I appreciate more than
she can possibly know.
There is silent understanding
cloaked in her bouyant smile
and ever-present calming
persuasion.
Thankfully,
she is both
junior and senior
and will be a student of life
always.
clr 2013
Beneath the iron man
there lies
a solid iron will, beneath the steely mask he sits,
mostly very still.
Is it humble, self-respect, or is that arrogance?
Does he disdain weak, one and all,
or do we call that tense?
Oedipus outran his fate, and so our Matt can, too.
Wait a sec, that is a LIE, what lies in wait for you?
Brightest bulb in darkening room,
Matt's intellect is wrapped
in silent steel, in clenching jaw,
how will his 'smart' be tapped?
Pablo Neruda
would be proud to share
his name with Jeremy.
When art has become his
way of life then he will
be complete
and only
then.
clr 2012
Although silence
wraps around her
like a banana peel around
a banana, I can hear her
cry through a hundred fruit skins.
Those about her
have lived as many years, but not as many lives as she,
and she tries to
disappear but I can hear her
crying out a hundred years from now.
Must she be her saviour?
Clr 2012
Changes her mind regularly
about change,
although she knows
that it is good, it feels bad.
she knows that it is sad, but
she is glad
that it happens
and when she writes more
she'll dig into her store
to find her personal
philosophical
core.
clr 2012
There lies within her
the wisdom of a million years of
mistakes, learned from.
Let her glaring beauty
distract you,
and you
will
miss perhaps the greatest
mind and heart
that ever
was, or ever will be,
except for maybe
a puppy's heart, which is the greatest of all.
Life is not to be trifled with or taken for granted,
and this
Aimee knows so well.
clr 2012
When wal-Mart had a sale
on
immune systems
she should have said
"No thank you, I'll get mine at Nordstrom's."
A peculiar thing, immune systems
and cash. They are
inextricably entwined,
and it seems that only the wealthy
shall have
their contagions
healed.
Clr 2012
Is battling some terrible monster
that sometimes controls his mind and body
with a piece of paper because he won't.
If he knew that self-control is
the mark of a sophisticated human,
the opposite of the brute who grabs and grunts
according to his impulses,
would that persuade him to follow
the precepts set forth by the law of the land?
Or would it simply encourage him to avoid, at all costs,
the outward trappings of a society that questions his
being
as he is?
Society:
Does he hate it, does he love it, or does he want nothing of it?
clr2012
Shanacie
smiles quietly from the
last row of faces,
thinking, learning, growing
Knowing.
C.R.
3/13
Dalton Niles smiles,
making his way through the day
checking and double checking
to make sure things are as he believes.
He left his 11th grade self-doubt behind
as his swarthy swagger and his
wagging finger
whisped him through the door on
his very first day
as a Senior
in my class.
CLR 3/13
Seneca said "Speech is the mirror of the mind"
and
if that is so, you are creating your mind at all times,
by the words that
pour out of you. You are what you notice,
and I suppose it is strange that I have heard,
through his word that
Kory keeps a bit of electricity with him at all times,
right there in his pocket.
I wonder if it is near the NO KLEENEX into which
I notice he blows out his ire
LOUDLY and with a sweet, swaggering smile,directed
into my mirror, or his?
Clr 2013
Awaken!
Some sleepy sentinels lie in wait,
whose time is now
to think.
To think, perchance to dream.
To dream, perchance to live in a nightmare,
in your rocking cradle.
Such lives I interrupt with my
couplets and pentameter.
Your life becomes my life when you enter that door,
just as my life is yours
for as long as you will have it.
clr 2012
Loren has learned to write in script,
in the ancient style of her ancestors and mine.
where it takes her, only she knows
but it is there that she boldly goes.
Sincerity lends strength to her staunchly correct
character.
As she dutifully walks the highwire
called life.
Balancing herself with her curved letters
and holding on to goodness as all there
can possibly be.
C.Ray 2013
Peyton is not sure,
and neither am I,
what time it is when school starts.
Is it when we arrive,
or when we leave that we learn?
Is soccer a bane, or a blessing to blame?
Is there a mother's hand inside
a puppet, or does the
puppet have a puppet of her own?
The world will swirl 'round as Peyton hits the ground, and
her final round of soccer bends its head and with shame, shuffles out the door,
as Peyton's shouting follows it all the way.
Tardy, says the teacher.
Tardy again.
CLR 2013