Random End of Year Short Poems

If I am going to encourage and insist that my students write, it is only fair that I do as well. I like shorter verse quite often: haiku, tanka, senryu, kwansaba. Here are a few I have written (mainly during lunch duty) in the past week or two.


where they hear music
all i can perceive is noise--
generation gap

©2010-Art Belliveau


the saddest fact is
i just cannot reach them all--
but i have to try

©2010-Art Belliveau


greeting his friends while
moving from table to table--
lunchtime is busy

©2010-Art Belliveau


outside the classroom
flying free from branch to branch
the joyful bird sings

©2010-Art Belliveau


The end of the school year comes,
at times seeming glacial in its pace.
Other times it flashes forward. It seems
as though I am living my life
as part of a cosmic traffic jam.
Moving in fits and starts, but aching
to find open road and cruise away.

©2010-Art Belliveau

Limerick 05/03/10

There once was a student in school,
Who never would follow a rule.
He'd sleep at his desk,
And make a big mess,
As he covered the whole thing in drool.

©2010-Art Belliveau

Swimming with Sharks 04/30/10

a darkened classroom
after school
on a Friday afternoon

the echoes of
the students’ voices
silently resound
in my head
as i sit here

papers are getting graded
grades are being entered
and yet...

i feel
(as i so often do)
that i am swimming
against the tide

being pulled away
from what i find important

being pulled under
by this rip tide current
of red tape
and record keeping

when all i want to do
is swim free
and play in the waves
of words
and books
and poems
and the creativity
of my students

©2010-Art Belliveau