My Cardboard Balcony

I'm not gonna lie - when you think about it, this entire week is pretty much my introspection on my little slice of the world right now. Well, at least two of the poems are. Sonnet from last week also touched on some school stuff, and my whole perspective on students and self-confidence and education versus teachers and school and dependence. Then this week's sonnet was definitely a more optimistic approach to the potential of some of my students' imaginations. "U.S.ED," definitely, was an enormous undertaking (approximately eight pages handwritten), and it was mostly inspired by another spoken word artist who you really do need to check out. His name is Suli Breaks, and the spoken word piece, "I Will Not Let An Exam Result Decide My Fate," can be found right here . This was the piece that, in several ways even if not all, really synced with my perspective on the school system versus actual education, and really, you can go through so many poems and st...

I Took A Ferry by Belinda Roddie I took a ferry to the prettiest part of San Francisco. My grandmother loved this place, where the bay waters kissed the rocks and made the air taste salty on my tongue. I thought of you, Eastern roots and Southern whereabouts, wishing me in one place while I wished you in another. We wished on the same star, which can’t take two wishes at once, or else its energy grows thin and fragile like a web too heavy with dew. So I thought about a song that claimed that to be loved is all you have to ask for, and I wondered, “Does that mean I shouldn’t ask for anything else?” But then I reconsidered the question by that bay that cool evening, crisp and sharp like saltwater, and I began to believe that love brought everything else I needed, tangible and intangible, as the mist settled on my cheeks and I kissed the fog where I beheld your face. The work you see here has not been edited nor altered since January 30th, 2009.

"What rating did they give your movie?" Theodore puffed out vapor from his electronic cigarette and sighed. "R." "Not PG-13?" "Too much gore, they said." "No kidding." I passed him a glass of wine. "So much for the marketing scheme." "I'm fighting it, though. All the way up to the top. What's a little decapitation gonna do to hurt the boys, huh?" I wasn't going to dignify his question with a response. I was just there for the chit-chat.