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for 4/28/20

A huge thank you to Erin K for sending so many poems our way and also being such a spine poem enthusiast!

Transcript:
Tell me who you are
(don't) call me crazy
Fish in a tree
How to
What if?
Counting by 7s
Unbound
The universe is in your hand
One giant leap
You're welcome, universe

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for 4/27/20

Last week, we invited the staff & students of Fusion Morristown to submit original spine poems. Our first spine poem is from Gabby!

Transcript:
Get out of that pit

On grief and grieving

you'll get through this

Be you

Perfectly yourself

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for 5/1/20

A double feature for the last day of our Poem-a-Day blog! Thank you to all who dropped by for a little taste of beauty in word form. And an especially big thank you to all our student contributors this last week!

Transcript:
If I stay
Tell me
Everything, everything
A thousand pieces of you

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for 5/1/20

Transcript:
Unsolved mysteries

Wonder

Out of my mind

Everything, everything

Echo

Black cats and evil eyes

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for 4/30/20

Transcript:
The road
Firefly lane
Their eyes were watching god
A northern light
On mystic lake
The fatal shore
Dead wake

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for 4/29/20

Transcript:

The last kids on earth
stranded,
the last thirteen,
where the red fern grows.
Time to be brave!
The bad guys, the witches,
chomp holes.
Rocks fall, everyone dies.
The end.

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by Rupi Kaur
for 4/24/20
Theme of the week: Hope

if you were born with
the weakness to fall
you were born with
the strength to rise

--rupi kaur

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by Gabrielle Calvocoressi
for 4/23/20
Theme of the week: Hope

Like the horn you played in Catholic school

the city will open its mouth and cry

out. Don't worry 'bout nothing. Don't mean

no thing. It will leave you stunned

as a fighter with his eyes swelled shut

who's told he won the whole damn purse.

It will feel better than any floor

that's risen up to meet you. It will rise

like Easter bread, golden and familiar

in your grandmother's hands. She'll come back,

heaven having been too far from home

to hold her. O it will be beautiful.

Every girl will ask you to dance and the boys

won't kill you for it. Shake your head.

Dance until your bones clatter. What a prize

you are. What a lucky sack of stars.

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by MAYA ANGELOU
for 4/22/20
Theme of the Week: Hope

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

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by Miguel Piñero
for 4/21/20
Submitted by Marci!
Theme of the Week: Hope

(See English version below)

QUIZÁ MAÑANA

traiga un verdadero mañana

y no iremos más a la deriva

hacia otros mundos

otras horas

otros amores

otras sombras

QUIZÁ MAÑANA

abrirá otros jardines

desprovistos de frutas prohibidas

sin el edén oriental

QUIZÁ MAÑANA

arrojaremos a la eternidad

la pantomima del autoengaño

los armarios se abrirán

rescatando de las sombras

el opalino toque del amor

QUIZÁ MAÑANA

cuando sus mundos

estén lejos y el amor

en nuestros ojos sea la única guía

a la resurrección

donde el amor es una verdad definida

en un mañana de quizás

QUIZÁ MAÑANA

NUESTROS CORAZONES

dejarán de ser

un océano de dolor

o un río de sufrir

y una montaña de deseos

de un mañana de ensueños

QUIZÁ MAÑANA

los muro de las prisiones

construidos sobre espirituales dolencias

se derrumben y sean lavadas

como castillos de arena en la playa

QUIZÁ MAÑANA

para otras almas

habrá este mañana

quizá mañana será mi hoy

para llegar a ser mi ayer de quizás

donde no necesitaré mañana

QUIZÁ MAÑANA…

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by Emily Dickinson
for 4/20/20
Submitted by Monica!
Theme of the Week: Hope

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

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by Sylvia Plath
for 4/17/20

Submitted by Sophie R.!

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

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by Percy Bysshe Shelley
for 4/16/20

Submitted by Isaac H.!

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

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by Bob Dylan
for 4/15/20

Submitted by Rob N.!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bob Dylan - Murder Most Foul (Official Audio)

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A love story about prime numbers
by Harry Baker
for 4/14/20

Submitted by Erin K.!

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by LANGSTON HUGHES
for 4/13/20

Submitted by Katie C!

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.

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by Robert Hayden
for 4/10/20

Submitted by Cathy M.!

Armored in oxygen,

faceless in visors—
mirrormasks reflecting
the general glare and
shadow of moonscape—
they walk slowmotion
floating the lifeless
dust of Taurus
Littrow. And Wow, they
exclaim; oh boy, this is it.

They sing, exulting
(though trained to be wary
of “emotion and
philosophy”), breaking
the calcined stillness
of once Absolute Otherwhere.
Risking edges, earthlings
to whom only
their machines are friendly
(and God’s radar-
watching eye?), they
labor at gathering
proof of hypothesis;
in snowshine of sunlight
dangerous as radium
probe detritus for clues.

What is it we wish them
to find for us, as
we watch them on our
screens? They loom there
heroic antiheroes,
smaller than myth and
poignantly human.
Why are we troubled?
What do we ask of these men?
What do we ask of ourselves?

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by Mary Oliver
for 4/9/20

Submitted by Susan W.!

You might see an angel anytime
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of
second level, but it’s not really
hard. The whole business of
what’s reality and what isn’t has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don’t care to
be too definite about anything.
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not
for other people. That’s a place
you just can’t get into, not
entirely anyway, other people’s
heads.

I’ll just leave you with this.
I don’t care how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin. It’s
enough to know that for some people
they exist, and that they dance.

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by Hollie McNish
for 4/8/20

Submitted by Monica!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Moment in the Sun by Hollie McNish | Spoken Word Adaptation of the Terrestrial Planets | BBC Earth

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by LI-YOUNG LEE
for 4/7/20

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

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by Toi Derricotte
for 4/6/20

I went down to
mingle my breath
with the breath
of the cherry blossoms.

There were photographers:
Mothers arranging their
children against
gnarled old trees;
a couple, hugging,
asks a passerby
to snap them
like that,
so that their love
will always be caught
between two friendships:
ours & the friendship
of the cherry trees.

Oh Cherry,
why can't my poems
be as beautiful?

A young woman in a fur-trimmed
coat sets a card table
with linens, candles,
a picnic basket & wine.
A father tips
a boy's wheelchair back
so he can gaze
up at a branched
heaven.
All around us
the blossoms
flurry down
whispering,

Be patient
you have an ancient beauty.
Be patient,
you have an ancient beauty.