Doppelganger
Miss Damson
was a doppelganger
for Bette Davis
right down
to the look
and eyes
and swagger
into the classroom
to teach
and it was said
that sometimes
she‘d go into
the cupboard
and have a drag
on a smoke
and if any kid
spoke out of turn
she’d give a stare
to make his or her soul
seemingly burn
but you saw
the way she could bring
silence to a room
when she entered
or bring a shudder
of fear
into the hearts
of the classroom braggers
and when she drew chalk
across the blackboard
it’d set teeth on edge
or threw chalk
or the blackboard wiper
at any kid stupid
or brave enough
to open their mouths
and the way she wrote
upon the board
her back to the class
that firm ass
and with that neat script
her fingers tight
around the chalk
as if around
the throat of any kid
who dared to talk
and you
she’d say
you at the back
you with the dumb look
don’t stare
out of the window
open the darn book
or hey you
girl with the bangs
don’t sit there
with your mouth open
or you’ll catch flies
and there’d be
an underground snigger
from others
or just dumb looks
anywhere
but at Miss Damson
even stuck between
pages of boring books.
poem by Terry Collett
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Related quotes
Is She In Love?
Is she in love with you
or what? Reynard said
indicating across
at the girl
at the other side
of the classroom
every time I look up
she's peering over
here like some hawk
after prey
he added
and you guessed
she was
but didn't say
to Reynard
who thought
all thoughts on love
were dumb
or should be left
between pages
of Shakespeare
or Keats
or maybe just
a cover word for
a fumble behind
bike sheds or woods
maybe she just likes
the way I comb my hair
you replied
looking down
at the science book
open on the desk
and by the way
he said
how much grease
you got on your hair
you look like
you fell in the darn jar?
Tooley the science teacher
looked your way
and Reynard clamped up
and began writing
in his book
and in between
scribbling words
in the exercise book
you glanced over at her
and took in her eyes
and that smile of hers
and smiled kind of
weakly back
and she mouthed
something to you
her lips making odd shapes
like some fish
out of water
and you tried to lip read
but it didn't make sense
so you just nodded
and hoped you'd not agreed
to anything
that her scary mother
wouldn't agree to
and then looked away
back to the science book
and life dull
and uninteresting books
full of boring questions
and Tooley at front
of the class
writing on the board
her fat ass moving
as she wrote
like some aging stripper
on her last show
and outside
the window
grey clouds
carrying
heavy snow.
poem by Terry Collett
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A Piece of Chalk (Children's Poem)
Chalk is happiest when the teachers come to him
Because he can chat about all sorts of subjects
Such as astronomy, geography, science and art
Chalk knows whatever you want to know
Chalk doesn’t like to do just one thing
When he is called on by the teacher
And he needs to follow the teacher’s orders
So Chalk hits the students chatting in class
To give them a big shock and stop their talking
Chalk hopes the seed of wisdom grows in students’ minds
And they can improve their studying a lot
If students want to learn about everything from Chalk
Even though every moment he becomes thinner and smaller
At the cost of his life
He still enjoys his work
The Classroom
you walk on by the classroom
day to day
but never think about
what’s in it
I know, I didn’t
not because you don’t care
cause it never entered your mined
you might wonder when you see the students
you might know that
they have to go to a “special”
classroom of there own
you might even know what’s
in the classroom
you don’t know what they
do in the classroom
the academics
the physical therapy
the carts and crafts
the culinary arts
most of all the life skills
sounds a lot like most of you classes
right
cause it is
so why not just stop on by
say hello to
the staff
the students
talk to one of the students for a while
they will teach you something
you’ll never learn anywhere else
the classroom will always be there
with students and staff
that will talk to you
watch them watch the students
you’ll learn a lot about life
let the classroom teach you something
let you teach the classroom,
that being “normal” is not
so different
teach that
please teach that
to the
classroom
for it will always be
just
a classroom with
students
staff
and a few students
who stopped on by
and
said hello
poem by Mrs. Cynosure
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Lucky Chalk
Keep saving...Keep saving
Or...Not
Let go and make room
For the teachers
There's wisdom on the board
The clapping of erasers
Sprinkles, tattered, and worn chalk
Like advice and re-arrangement
Dusting all the desks
For the new class
Untill they graduate
Not everyone will
Those left behiend
Can clean the board
And gather the chalk gems
Lucky janitors
poem by Josephine Lauderdale
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And I promise to reserve a seat for my lonesome Master
Still I am going to school and nobody sits in the class.
Peeled walls look so sad like an old fresco
And I think of my old friends.
A piece of chalk and the duster
Still remain in a corner on the rack below the blackboard.
Some letters were missing in the old essays but readable.
Before I step down I hear the echoes of music teacher's melancholy voice
And I never thought a chalk could speak like a parrot.
'Hey! Master I watched your regrets and I want to tell you that some of your friends already stuck in a home for the elders.
Your favorite teacher was retired and she collects her last pension it seems.
But it's glad to see still you look as a student's charisma with your old haversack.
Please come another day after the refurbishment of the school
Then you could see the new students and teachers
And I promise to reserve a seat for my lonesome Master.'
* To Sandra Fowler in gratitude.
poem by Nimal Dunuhinga
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Miss Arkle's Wart
Miss Arkle had a wart on
The back of her neck.
Miss Arkle taught maths
And smelt of lemons.
You wiped the blackboard
As she had instructed
Wiping away her handwritten
Workouts which made no
Sense to your tired brain.
The wart on her neck like
A dried brown prune caught
Your eyes. It sat above her
Pink scarf. It kind of spoilt
Her beauty like a bruised apple.
You wanted to slice it off
And flick it away. Having wiped
The blackboard clear you
Returned to your seat.
You carried the image in
Your mind like a damaged fruit.
Maybe you thought she should
Grow her hair and hide it there.
Miss Arkle had beautiful breasts
Like melons on show in a store.
You and other boys enjoyed
Your secret stare. Shame about
The wart now out of sight. You’d
Take both images of Miss Arkle
To your lusty bed that night.
poem by Terry Collett
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Like an Animal
Behind the smooth texture
Of my eyes, way inside me,
A part of me has died:
I move my bloody fingernails
Across it, hard as a blackboard,
Run my fingers along it,
The chalk white scars
That say I AM SCARED,
Scared of what might become
Of me, the real me,
Behind these prison walls.
poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca
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Being Alone
As I walk within my home
Room to room I walk alone
Like a nomad I do roam
And everywhere I go I am known.
I look through my books in my book shelf
Memories I do remember of Passions I felt
And once again there is no one else
As I search alone all by myself.
I sit solemnly upon my comfortable chair
I again look and no one is there
So outside my window I do stare
I wonder for myself if anyone does care.
Outside in my yard I go for a walk
And once again to myself I begin to talk
Then I have a revelation so I had to balk
Is my life but a canvas and I its chalk.
In my yard I pick up a stone
I think to myself what I have I own
And never do I whine or complain or moan
So why I think is it so bad being alone.
Randy L. McClave
poem by Randy McClave
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Chalk Dust
Chalk dust
Under fingernails
Scribble-covered chalkboards
white on green
Smoky air
From chalk filled erasers
Pounded in the night
Chalk dust on the breeze
Floating out of sight
(April 2004)
poem by Elizabeth Peterson
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Tiny Angel
.Tiny Angel,
Fragile and weak,
Spun from silken chalk.
Tiny Angel,
Fierce and strong,
Spun from silken chalk.
My fallen Tiny Angel
Fragile and weak,
Gave me strength and hope.
Spun from silken chalk.
My fallen Tiny Angel,
Strong and brave,
Spun from silken chalk.
My sleeping Tiny Angel,
Spun from silken chalk,
No longer fragile and weak,
Flies.......
poem by Christina Jayne
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Down South
Let me take you down south
Hear it from the dover's mouth
The rhythm will make you want to move your body
I had it once and never ever forgot it
Feel the rhythm of rhapsody
Your body moves in raw ecstasy
Explosive eruption beyond compare
Take my advice don't think twice
Let me take you way down south
Step back cuz the funk is here and
The base is kickin' straight to your ear man
Because it's like that so don't talk back
And if you do then you're gonna get the back slap
Down south that's an enigma
But to you it's a stupid dumb stigma
That's right it's outta sight
Let me tell you 'bout my baby
She loves me don't mean maybe
She knows what I think and I don't have to say it
I love her so I don't have to play it
We sit and drink in the sun
I raise my glass and say she's the one
Cool breeze light squeeze life
Take my advice don't think twice
Let me take you way down south
Step back I'm about to get hectic
Chalk it up as another dialectic
Hard like a jam
Smooth like a ballad
Call it what you want but I call it sound salad
A salad grown in the garden of Eden
Seekin' out pleasures like my boys in Sweden
That's right the grooves tight like
Sit back just relax
song performed by by 311 from Unity
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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People Will Talk
The following lines were written at the request of a little girl,
who said she would recite them at a Sunday School
entertainment. She wished it written to the refrain people
will talk. I presume the ideas in the following are nearly,
altogether original, or they are very differently worded
from the old pieces under the title of 'People will Talk.'
Dressing in fashion will be called vain,
And they'll call you a dowdey [sic] if you are plain ;
But do what is right, lot that be the test
Then proudly hold up your head with the best-
For people will talk.
You will never be wrong, if you do what is right,
And this course pursue with all of your might ;
And if you're a child, going to school,
Or full grown up, take this for your rule-
For people will talk.
The best way to do is to let them rave,
And they'll think more of you, if you are brave ;
For no one, will ever think you are rude,
If you are determined for to be good-
For people will talk.
Little girl, on her way to Sunday school class,
Rude boys sometimes will not let her pass ;
But if they do see that she is not afraid
They soon will respect the brave little maid-
For people will talk,
Little girls should learn to knit and to sew,
Then, if to womanhood they ever grow,
Their hose they can knit, and make their own dress,
Then to their homes they will bring bless-
For people will talk.
And their homes they should make tidy and neat,
Everything should be so clean and so sweet.
This line for ourselves out we will chalk,
And we are determined in it to walk-
For people will talk.
poem by James McIntyre
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Wild Romance
Don't think I am a laughing-stock
I will make tonight an epoch
Baby all my limbs want to talk
I want to rock you like hard rock
We are two birds that make a flock
I am tick tock you are the clock
On your heart's door I want to knock
Though I have the key of its lock
You are blackboard my tongue is chalk
I want to kiss you like peacock
And hug you like electric shock
You are my prey I am a hawk
poem by Asif Andalib
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An Instructor's Dream
Many decades after graduation
the students sneak back onto
the school-grounds at night
and within the pane-lit windows
catch me their teacher at the desk
or blackboard cradling a chalk:
someone has erased their youth,
and as they crouch closer to see
more it grows darker and quieter
than they have known in their lives,
the lesson never learned surrounds
them; why have they come? Is
there any more to memorize now
at the end than there was then"
What is it they peer at through shades
of time to hear, X times X repeated,
my vain efforts to corner a room's
snickers? Do they mock me? Forever?
Out there my past has risen in
the eyes of all my former pupils but
I wonder if behind them others
younger and younger stretch away
to a world where dawn will never
ring its end, its commencement bell.
poem by Bill Knott
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Not Imitating Anything Within Myself
Not imitating anything within myself. Not
cloning, replicating, or even confining
the same seeds to the same plants, endlessly
spiralling through space like a galaxy or a hawk,
drift, release, and disperse, condense and shine,
shudder with motherlodes of lightning in the ore,
let the light turn back on itself like a solar flare
or an ingrown hair, let the presence show me
the absolute purity of its absence if it must,
and that which is greatly unknown retain its sublimity.
I seek nothing. And find it everywhere. I make
no appeal to the silence to make something happen
for a change, as if it had a mind of its own
that didn't come with an explanation or an alibi.
Neither indictment nor confession, I'm not listening
to the stars through the black walnut leaves with my ears.
Three blocks away the teen agers sound like
white water in a small rapid, and the heavy night air
can barely keep its eyelids open, and though
I've lived here before they were born,
I am always the occasion of a stranger
who takes note and moves on down some deserted avenue
or path through the woods where the moon
and the stars appear more luminously invigorated
as they were before the town began to smoke them out like bees
and they dimmed to mere chalk dust on a blackboard.
I give a military salute to the lamp posts of the Imperial Guard
and go into exile like Napoleon. Je me souviens.
I will make no more wars upon my solitude.
I will walk with Sister Lunacy, my strange companion,
and we shall return our shadows to the darkness
like the feathers of two birds of prey renewing our wingspan
just to wheel on the wind like figure-skaters no one is watching.
Not to aspire. Not to long. Not to fulfil, acquire, or achieve.
Simply to act boundlessly as the smoke from a fire.
As the breath from our mouths on the afterlife of a star
that was a great arsonist in its time,
as the ashes of the bridges it crossed will tell you
in words of white phosphorus that will burn through your eyes.
Sweet absorption into the darkness on the other side
of seeing, I leave my images and metaphors behind me
like a man who's just wandered off the job
leaves his tools as they are, and follows some intuition
lingering like the fragrance of a night out of time in the air
that means nothing sustainable to anyone but him.
poem by Patrick White
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Sucker Punch
Talk!
Sometimes the doing of it,
Is to gossip to entertain listening ears...
Shared and overheard by others,
Having fun or just being...
Nosy and inquisitive.
And at others times,
A vindictiveness arises.
With a main purpose focused...
To ruin someone's life.
No matter who the victim is!
This is 'talk'...
Like the taking of chalk,
To scratch against a blackboard used.
Since some have come to seek attention...
To direct an amusement to abuse.
But there are those,
Who refuse to be pulled into arguments.
And they prepare to knock out somebody's lights...
By throwing a sucker punch from nowhere in sight.
That lands a fist!
Shutting mouths opened...
And silencing some lips.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Open Your Box
Open your box,
Open your box,
Open your trousers,
Open your thighs,
Open your legs,
Open, open, open, open, oooh.
Open, open, open, open,
Open your legs,
Open your flies,
Open your ears,
Open your nose,
Open your mouth,
Open, open, open, open, oooh.
Open.
Open your cold feet,
Open, open,
Open, open, open, let's open, let's open the cities.
Open the cities,
Open, open, open the world,
Open, let's open the world.
Open, open, oooh -
Open, open, ooh!
song performed by by Yoko Ono
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Open Your Box
Open your box,
Open your box,
Open your trousers,
Open your thighs,
Open your legs,
Open, open, open, open, oooh.
Open, open, open, open,
Open your legs,
Open your flies,
Open your ears,
Open your nose,
Open your mouth,
Open, open, open, open, oooh.
Open.
Open your cold feet,
Open, open,
Open, open, open, let's open, let's open the cities.
Open the cities,
Open, open, open the world,
Open, let's open the world.
Open, open, oooh -
Open, open, ooh!
song performed by by Yoko Ono
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Hope Is An Open Window
(christopher ward/tim tickner/diana ross)
Are we not more than hunger and music
Are we not more than harlequins and horns
Are we not more than color and drums
Are we not more than anger and dance
Give me courage so I can spread it over my face and mouth
Give me courage, give me courage
Give me courage, give me courage
I walk these city streets see the people there
Look into the eyes of quiet despair
And the faces tell a story that words never can
And it falls to everyone of us to try and understand
Out of kindness
One act of grace makes the world we walk a better place
Hope is an open window
Love an open door
To reach out for each other
Is what we came here for
Through an open window
We can see the way
If we hold on to each other, every day
We build walls of suspicion with bars of fears
Tell ourselves well be safe in here
I know more brings us together
Than keeps up apart
First we got to tear down these walls within our hearts
We might be strangers, we can be friends
You and I we both need to let somebody in
Hope is an open window
Love an open door
To reach out for each other
Is what we came here for
Through an open window
We can see the way
If we hold on to each other, every day
Give me courage so I can spread over my face and mouth
We are secret rivers with shaking hips and crests
Come awake in our thunder so that our eyes can see behind trees
Give me courage so I can spread over my face and mouth
Give me courage, give me courage
Give me courage, give me courage
Hope is an open window
Loves an open door
To reach out for each other
Is what we came here for
Through an open window
We can see the way
If we hold on to each other, every day
Hope is an open window
Love an open door
Gotta be there for each other
Is what we sent here for
Through an open window
We can find a way
To love one another
Hope is an open window
Love an open door
song performed by by Diana Ross
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Game of Stare
There’s a boy with his fellow
I caught his eyes with a wander
Now the game has been played
Now you have been challenged
You better asked my name
Before anyone came
But you only stare, stare, stare
Like I annoy your safety ring
Like you can’t even think
You only stare, stare, stare
Like I lose you something
Something you can’t even win
There’s boy in the dance floor
I catch his eyes, he comes closer
Now the game is replayed
Now you better watch out
You better take me out
Before someone calls you coward
Cause you only stare, stare, stare
Like you never see me in dress
Like no one else who dares
You only stare, stare, stare
Like I steal you something
Something you can’t even think
There’s a boy in the park
He makes me catch his eyes
Now the game is forward
Now you don’t want to break up
You better have a word
Before you loose your hold
And you only stare, stare, stare
Like a puppy wants a bone
Like you’ll be lost if I’m gone
You only stare, stare, stare
Like I can give you something
Something you think you can’t win
poem by Maria Sudibyo
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