On Wednesday I made my 12th annual visit to Clark Magnet High School as a Guest Poet in Mrs. Guarino's Creative Writing classroom. We all had fun having the students ask me questions. I then read some of my poetry from a specially made chapbook I gave to them. Finally we composed new poetry. I always seem to get inspired by their energy (and in this case by the cover of my chapbook, photo below), so here's the poem I wrote:
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On a street corner
in a suburban city
Hangs a metal box
attached to a light pole
No bigger than a book
bolted onto cement composite
And on the front of this
rectangle is a face
Two bulbous eyes,
left red, right blue
A small shiny push
button worn nose
And a tiny round flat screw
mouth that mouths, oh!
Like it's shocked that
it's spent decades here
With an affixed white
"hair" plate that points
The way to walk across on
which while someone was waiting
Took the time to etch
HARSH inside the black arrow
For now labeling the life
of an anthropomorphic creation
