My Soul (WHAT?!)

(Random picture of a poster in my friend's house.)

I mentioned in my previous post that I was drawn to a bulletin board containing poetry at the Elementary school a few days ago.  It was interesting to see the similarities in all the poems.  For instance, you could tell they had been guided to include all of the senses, and there were frequent uses of horse, water, fire, and flower imagery.  Yet the way that each child interpreted this was vastly different.  These poems transfixed me, and I think they are absolutely wonderful.  The first was written by a fourth grader, and the second by a third grader!  If only I could get my mind to work like that again! 

My Soul

My soul is a rabbit bouncing up and down
like a scary rollercoaster.
My soul is a cut that won't stop bleeding.
My soul is clock tick, tock, tick, tock.
My soul is a tick on the back of your neck,
Sucking the blood- oh, I love your blood
it's very tasty.  My soul is lava bubbling
and boiling.  My soul is you with a smile
on your face.

My Soul

My soul is like a horse jumping over things
and when it stops its soul leaps really fast every second
when anybody tries to touch the wild horse in my soul
he will try to bite you. 

My soul moves like a dancing girl all night
And she never stops until her feet hurt
But they never hurt because she is really good at it
And she never sleeps at night and she is very poor too
But she lives, she has a little bite of food.

My soul dreams about if I am going to have kids
Or if I am going to have a husband for my kids
Or if I will have a big family.

My soul smells and feels like fresh water
running through my body and my soul feels
like I am spreading my wings out of my back.

My soul has been seen by little creatures
And they crawl inside me when I sleep.
I feel really weird
and when I wake up they crawl out of me. 

Comments

[jackie]

this is such a moving poem.. powerful words

[Larry]

These cry out for setting to music. They would be terrific at any age. More, please.

[M]

My friend and I are brainstorming a dance based on them. I'm OBSESSED and agree with you Larry, that I would still be in love had they been written by a 50 year old.

"My soul is like a horse jumping over things
and when it stops its soul leaps really fast every second
when anybody tries to touch the wild horse in my soul
he will try to bite you. "

INCREDIBLE.

[Tania]

First of all, I love your friend's poster. A lot.

Second of all I agree with your previous statement that kids are able to tap in to a level of creativity we lose as we grow older. I think that it does have to do with the "education" system in America, which is designed to stifle creativity and increase standardized test scores. But I think even more it is just a byproduct of growing older, socializing (a natural part of human development), and therefore learning not to give or reveal too much that is real for fear of being ostracized (hello middle school!) . You learn you need to conform to survive in the social world, and then unlearning that so that you can develop a unique creative voice becomes a huge journey, and in many ways a reverse one. A difficult one to be sure.

[Tania]

First of all, I love your friend's poster. A lot.

Second of all I agree with your previous statement that kids are able to tap in to a level of creativity we lose as we grow older. I think that it does have to do with the "education" system in America, which is designed to stifle creativity and increase standardized test scores. But I think even more it is just a byproduct of growing older, socializing (a natural part of human development), and therefore learning not to give or reveal too much that is real for fear of being ostracized (hello middle school!) . You learn you need to conform to survive in the social world, and then unlearning that so that you can develop a unique creative voice becomes a huge journey, and in many ways a reverse one. A difficult one to be sure.

[emily]

Just watched The Bridge to Terabithia last night and it took me back to being nine and a swimming pool being a remote patch of ocean where our plane had crashed and my sister and I were the only survivors. The pool side was an island. Or the variation where one of us survived said crash and the other was the only living person on the island. or had survived an earlier comparable disaster. And to my godparents' garden which was an orphanage/boarding school with a child of each age rather like in the Sound of Music and we took turns being their caretakers and being each child in order to properly envisage, cash out, understand, experience their needs, personalities.

I'm starting to think you're right about losing so much as we grown up. This is something I haven't thought about properly in a long time - part of my autobiography that just wasn't coming together slightly because I couldn't take it seriously, place myself back in those times, making the account shallowly descriptive and portraying none of the enthusiasm.

Yay.

[DustPuppyOI]

Hi Matt,

I just got my copy of Dance Magazine yesterday and your kind words on Jennifer Alexander's life are in the Transitions section on p. 89.

[david hallberg]

How do we lose that sense of innocence that we always seem to love in kids. If only we could hold on to that. I guess life makes you grow thicker skin than we really like to imagine we have.