Poetry Dump

Here are some delectable morsels from my work with 7th through 9th grade English students, whom I assure I never force to do anything that I won’t or can’t do myself.

Haiku and Senryu Poems

Dread

Dead grass withering
Scorching desert wind blowing
Another Monday

Treats
Hot, brown and steaming
The answer to life’s problems
Coffee, sweet with cream

Sonnets and Other Mysteries

Inspired
My pencil danced crazily
Over the bone-white sheet
Mysteriously guided by unseen
Frantic hand-animating forces
Scratching a silver path
Emptying fevered inspiration
From my droughty mind
Expressed hoarded then forgotten

My Epitaph (a sonnet)
When life has reached the point where it must halt
What joys and happiness will I have sown?
Or will my harvest illustrate my faults
Showing where the selfish weeds have grown?
Which hearts were softened, which made harder still,
Influenced by the way I’ve tried to live?
What efforts have I made to warm the chill
That life on earth to hearts so often gives?
From my walk may another’s walk be made
More whole, and may this earth his life transcend.
By God’s grace, of my life may it be said,
“He followed, loved and served until the end.”
How much more time will it take this to show?
These questions drive my actions even now.
© 2008 Karl Becker

The Towers
Icons of wealth and worldly pow’r,
They stood upon the island keep
‘til early one September hour
When Fury rose from troubled sleep.
She flew, a hateful wrath within,
twin demons t’ward the lofty spires,
which promptly moved to crash therein
And marry steel to steel with fire.
As witnesses of brutal death
watched pale and helpless from below,
a thousand victims held their breath
and waited for the final blow,
which quickly came, oh hellish fire,
cascading concrete, glass, debris.
Where once two solid towers stood,
catastrophe and ruin lay.
The rest is history, a tale
of bitterness and abject grief –
the day the mighty towers fell
merciless Fury’s wrath unleashed.
© 2006 Karl Becker