The insanity of my fifth grade poetry project

As some might have heard, I'm getting ready for a big move. This means that I've been digging through old boxes to determine what to keep and what needs to be tossed. In other words, something I should have done years ago but put off until it became critical. I've culled most of my old school items, but the book for my fifth grade poetry project is just too delightfully absurd to throw away. Where else can you find nihilistic clean limericks (with almost zero adherence to proper metric conventions of the form to boot!) about people falling down stairs and fluffy poems about cats nestled together in a single volume? And why would there be a longer free verse poem about Harriet Tubman amidst such poems?

The teachers' aides at my elementary school must have been obsessed with the laminating and binding machines. And also apparently had an unlimited supply of plastic binding combs. And isn't the way I used to sign my name awesome?

First up, some free-standing limericks. Fifth grade me clearly didn't care about meter.

The plot of this poem sounds suspiciously similar to an episode of Bottom.

Did I mention that one of the nihilistic clean limericks also has a fluffy cat theme? Although stairs are not involved in this one.

I think these next two pages were supposed to be haikus, but whatever they are, they're a total snoozefest.

Meh, nothing much to see here, move along.

Okay, "Fieldmouse" almost redeems these two pages of alleged haikus.

Now some cinquains. My favorite single verse poem from this collection is in this section.

Yes, fifth grade me, I get it, you really want a cat. Don't worry, in three and a half more years, you'll finally get your first cat, and a year after that you'll get your proper Crazy Cat Lady Starter Kit (a.k.a. adopting a stray who happened to be pregnant). By the time you reach 30, you'll have spent way more years living with a swarm of cats than living without that swarm.

And "Sidewalk" is a work of sheer, unadulterated genius. If I ever become a famous writer and someone asks me what I consider to be my greatest literary achievement, I will tell them that it is this poem I wrote at the age of ten. It speaks to the harsh realities of urban life, and the essential duality (both permanency and impermanency) of things. I want this one on a t-shirt.

The nerdy, sycophantic page. And you have one guess as to which instrument I played in school band.

The next two pages are apparently a format called "sneaky poems", if the second page of this section can be trusted. The final line of each is written with a funny offset, which is to imply that it's not actually part of the poem, but rather the subject of the poem that you're supposed to guess. I'm certain this was the way I was required to format them, because obviously they would have been better if the subjects were either revealed on the back of the page, or upside down at the bottom of the page.

Those stains definitely aren't coffee, because no one in my family drank coffee at the time. I hope those stains are Dr. Pepper, because I don't want to entertain other notions.

I wish I could remember the poster referenced in the poem about my fifth grade English teacher. I'm certain my friend Jeffrey was probably involved. As for Mr. Szabat himself, he was known for a warped sense of humor (although it's obviously been too long for me to remember any of his jokes). I'm certain he played an important role in the development of my sense of humor. If nothing else, the fact that this project was for his class and not some other teacher undoubtedly influenced my bizarre subject matter for this book.

Whoever says you're not a real patriot unless you're hauling a huge American flag on your pickup truck has clearly never read the first poem on this page.

The second poem is so ridiculously meta.

And now we reach the free verse piece about Harriet Tubman. I don't know why I included this poem in the book in the first place, since the note in pencil on the first page of the poem clearly indicates that this was written for the gifted group (don't ask what the acronym for the group means...I don't think we were ever told) and not for this class. The gifted group read a biography of Harriet Tubman, which is the raison d'etre for this piece. I think fifth grade me thought she was being really deep with this piece, and must have apparently been proud of it, since she didn't need to include it in this book and yet did so anyway. Although this is a well meaning tribute written by a child, I'm certain parts of it might be inadvertently problematic in wording (the first stanza definitely could have been put better, and the last stanza is awful...it probably would have been a much better work without those two stanzas). But I feel it'd be disingenous of me to not acknowledge my past (however warty), so here it is.

This page makes it a bit more obvious that this book was written with ballpoint pen, because the aside comment is obviously in pencil.

Hopefully it's obvious that in the latter verse on this page, I meant the northern US and not the cardinal direction. Fifth grade me understood geography well enough to know that Canada is even further north than the northern US.

Poor Harriet. The last stanza of her poem has to share a page with the first stanza of "Cats". That's right, "Cats" continues on the next page.

And here's the two remaining stanzas of "Cats". The whole poem would have fit on a single page, so I really don't know why its start had to share a page with the end of the Harriet Tubman poem.

'Stiripes'? And we were doing so well.

(Also, I think that word before 'colored' is 'quad', not 'and'. But you might have been able to figure out it's not 'and' if you've noticed that kid me used a funny ampersand in place of 'and' after commas. Kid me also hadn't developed a firm opinion on the Oxford comma...you'll notice some poems use the Oxford comma, some don't. I'm firmly pro Oxford comma as an adult.)

This collection concludes with the four page epic saga of Jack and Yak, told in a series of limericks, some of which deliberately violate the rhyming pattern. It is a tale for the ages, of two rivals who keep falling down stairs. And one of them was apparently ruler of the world.

I'm not certain why yak is capitalized in the first stanza, since the first stanza clearly refers to a literal yak and not Jack's nemesis.

As for the second stanza, I'm really wondering what fifth grade me thought she meant. The bits about tingling and tickling sound pretty dirty, but I don't think that was the intended meaning. I think I've inadvertently created the first pornographic limerick for people who have a falling down the stairs fetish.

You might notice that the titles for the stanzas at the top of the page are at the bottom of the preceding page, with the exception of the first stanza that has no title.

I have no idea why "of Jack" at the end of the fourth line wasn't the beginning of the fifth line...it would have at least kept that stanza in proper rhyming pattern. And "Jack's Bungee Inc." obviously doesn't fit the rhyming pattern at all.

"Fishing at Hudson Bay" clearly doesn't belong with the rest of this poem, although I'm really digging the 'pride'/'died' bit.

And Jack died in the most bizarre manner ever. You'd think it'd be massive internal injuries that did him in, but no, it was apparently acute onset alopecia and a vat of gak.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up there! You're telling me that Jack not only used to rule the world, but also had a son? Why wasn't this mentioned sooner in this epic? Why did "Fishing at Hudson Bay" make the cut, but not stanzas about Jack getting married, and Mrs. Jack giving birth? Okay, I don't think we need those stanzas to figure out what happened, since both events had to involve at bare minimum someone falling down the stairs, if not a literal yak as well. Jack Jr.'s birth probably involved him luging down the stairs.

I hope you enjoyed this adventure through the insanity of my fifth grade poetry book. Someone must have been slipping me drugs against my knowledge when I wrote these poems: it's the only rational explanation.

The insanity of my fifth grade poetry project

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