Spring (from a teacher's point of view)

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Okay, I'm too bogged down to do a proper blog, but here's a poem I wrote yesterday for my students' poetry unit test. They had to analyze one poem they'd studied in class and another (this one) that they'd never seen before.



“Spring”


It’s spring outside and I’m trapped in here

With evil teenagers: snarling zombies hungering

For brains. They lurch lazily through the door like

They’re stop-motion animated clay reindeer

In an ancient Christmas special in which they sing

About helping an evil Santa deliver a broken toy or bike.

When it’s cold and rainy with April showers

They whine and complain constantly as if

I were making them offer up their firstborn

Child for an experiment to gain super powers

And all they get in return is a salmonella-infested jar of Jiff

So they whimper and sniffle and look forlorn.

Then the sun comes out and their attention spans shrivel

And they twitch in their seats like cats watching birds

Through a window, because they too are trapped in here

With me, their prison warden, and my lessons are drivel:

As useless as a silver dinner platter full of stinky turds

So why in the name of Zeus did I choose this career?

Because their complaints feed the darkness within me

And their groans of agony are my gourmet steak dinners

Served up for me to feast upon daily. Fortunately I have no soul

Otherwise I would be as huge as a gas guzzling SUV

And among complaint collectors I am the winner

Because their eye-rolling, sigh-heaving is my goal.

I

Am

Full.