The Moon Is Our Hope - The Day One Magic Box Poem From The Activity We Kick Off With This Morning @writingproject @cwpfairfield

I have been doing the 'Magic Box' activity with students for almost two decades. It's an exercise that gets students playing with language and putting ideas together in random ways. Every time I do this activity, I play around with my own ten words and walk myself through all the steps to get the language moving. The result for Day One of this week's Young Adult Literacy Lab for Poets with Attallah Sheppard and Gina Forberg is

The Moon Is Our Hope

Sometimes it’s a bummer, 

the way summer makes us dumber 

    without having a coffeehouse for our souls.

We write to grow and tumble, 

in this intellectual triathlon, we rumble,

 with word-play, although it may crumble,

 or melt like ice-cream from our sweat…

How much do you want to bet

 we’ll need a dictionary, a library 

(some Pictionary with a strawberry)

while we work our way to this Friday

as plumbers who unclog brains?

Oh, as Gina explains, “It’s crackerjacks

 and sea scallops, 

cotton candy, a writer’s palate,

especially with sips of wine.”

Thumper hops, and blubber bops, 

we writers, take whatever drops

to sprinkle upon the page.

“Poetry,” she says out loud, “is good for any age. 

Together, friends, let’s contemplate and rage”

The moon is the hope,

the mother to the madness, 

who is mesmerized by Pandora’s box - 

she is a fox with the potential for

 friendship and memories. 

She is a maniac

who is moved by angels, 

meandering with lawn gnomes 

through the gardens of a good book,

and, like a rainbow, she 

makes us magnificent like a nap. 

The Diva has her magic rings,

and like Alisha Keys she sings, 

and brings us possibility, its supremes,

in the wishful ways such music brings

passionate pianos and a 

one-woman show,

the miracles, the monologues, 

& the ways the voice will grow,

from bursting forth - the renaissance - 

all of us are destined to explode

in the melodic, theatrical dreams 

upon the BET Harlem road

granting us to know,

what’s civil and right

while the symphony marches within us.

This is the voice of CWP - 

it’s you & us, both you & me,

who serendipitously skip 

along the shoreline…

It’s the poet who must design the miracles

along the Sound.

Yes, it’s summer vacation, 

but the creations abound and

 fly with the magical birds - 

your words - those brain turds -

coasting along the waterfront 

            of your soul, ya’ know? 

as you doodle your world 

and find the sand-songs dunes 

that trickle along the beach…

and for this reason we must reach

       and say: 

u gotta write for what’s right 

& fight with all u’r might 

to insight incite 

and to ignite a spotlight 

to put yourself in the limelight 

outright & forthright,

a’ight?

because there is no other way.