2 more days of April Camp NaNoWriMo! I came up with one last book title poem – and conveniently had some broken glass to go along with the aesthetic.
Silence
beheld
where the rock splits the sky.
hush, hush
The chaos of standing still.
Camp NaNoWriMo Day 27 Poetry: “Trump Wrote a Coronavirus Poem”
For today’s poem, I went through transcripts of Trump’s speeches from the past few months and pieced together phrases he said to create a bizarre poem about COVID-19.
Of course, most of it is pretty out-of-context, but there were a few stanzas that were almost one long quote. I’ve also kept his grammar errors that I came across, and I believe I only added one word. This was a fun one.
Trump Wrote A Coronavirus Poem
by Lauren Hallstrom
Beautiful day in the Rose Garden,
tremendous distance between chairs.
It’s really pretty impressive to see.
It’s incredible and it’s all brand new
and at the highest level, we’re getting only the highest level.
Now, this is just my hunch:
corona flu.
We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China,
and we have it under control.
It’s going to be just fine.
Watch very closely for the invisible enemy.
Where are the masks going? Are they going out the back door?
Somebody should probably look into that.
I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.
I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have
done a very good job from the beginning.
I just don’t see, from a practical standpoint,
how that’s possible to go from
that to that.
I think it’s maybe worse than hoarding.
A lot of people are dying, so it’s very unpleasant.
You have the mask on. Yeah, that’s great. Just for a second.
See the men in front of you? Are you worried about her? Are you worried?
He’s not worried. Look, he’s protected. Go ahead.
The postal service is a joke.
I hope I didn’t get any of your clients in trouble,
but it could be that they are in trouble.
Stop. You can’t work. You have to stay home.
I know insurance companies better than anybody.
I know more about drones,
the power of Facebook
campaign finance
politicians
Democrats
the economy
than anybody. I know about every form of safety
that you can have.
Why don’t you act in a little more positive?
Why didn’t we just wing it?
Yeah, I’m an energy person.
If the sun is out, it goes away in less than a minute.
It’s always trying to get you.
Somebody said to me today
they didn’t know that we had that many countries.
No, not you. You were there. If you’re there,
I never forget. You were.
I didn’t say that.
I’d like to talk about something
that right now is of more interest…
So, supposedly we hit the body with a tremendous,
whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful, light.
I guess maybe depending on whose hands you’re talking about.
I see the disinfectant,
where it knocks it out in one minute.
I guess that’s one of the reasons they say wash your hands.
Then I said
supposing you brought the light inside the body,
which you can do either through the skin or
in some other way,
is there a way we can do something like that
by injection inside
or almost a cleaning, because you see
it gets in the lungs.
It does a tremendous number on the lungs.
Sounds interesting, right?
The fake news didn’t like it at all.
I hear stories like that all the time.
This is a hard surface.
It will miraculously disappear.
Camp NaNoWriMo Day 26: How to Homeschool – a Poem in Lockdown
The month is almost over, and I’ve managed to write about 4,000 words of poetry! Today’s poem came from my frustration about people too offhandedly saying they are homeschooling.
I was homeschooled for eight years of my education, and it has really shaped me. Now, in an unprecedented time where most students are participating in remote learning, I’ve seen so many frustrated parents online. It’s understandable, and I have a great respect for the teachers and parents working to put together something new.
When parents and news headlines mention “homeschooling” though, I just hope you’ll remember that people have been homeschooling for a long time, and it and remote learning are not the same.
How to Homeschool
a COVID-19 poem by Lauren Hallstrom
- set up a spot, maybe in your kitchen or basement,
where you can tell yourself it’s time to work. build a classroom,
if you want to. there is a fuzzy blanket here,
there is a bowl of M&Ms and Goldfish. a fireplace that you have to keep
scooting a little farther from as your math lesson progresses.
- go to one of those educational stores for teachers
and play with the kinetic sand
and piece together several different curricula for each subject
because you like different things about each one.
- go home and buy everything online for cheaper.
- they have a routine now. they have their math lessons and essays
and the younger ones are meeting to learn the difference between
affect and effect
and now everyone is coming together to read about the Nazca Lines.
- ask them what they want to learn too, and
let that surprise you. make a model greenhouse, write a musical,
create a circuit board, learn tennis, learn how to build a bridge
that will hold and not break.
- they are not alone. they are joining advisory boards and fencing schools
and learning how to meet people
in more places than one.
- whisper to yourself what you are doing, because
who is the world to judge, and sometimes you don’t let it sink in.
you are working two full-time jobs—
you have no need for parent-teacher
conferences because you are both. you are inspiring them
to love learning that happens anywhere.
you are grading fairly, and since the world needs proof,
here are the biannual standardized test results.
- remote learning is not the same as homeschooling.
there are parents setting their kids down in front of computers
with pre-planned lessons
because they had to,
and no one was prepared for this.
they are saying this is hard,
and that’s because it is,
but they don’t know the half of it.
their jokes about playing on the trampoline
and calling it P.E. are only hurting everybody.
- you have to realize that you don’t need
to know everything. they will always be changing math.
the English language delights in not following rules.
you are imperfect, and you are learning
that teachers are still students
of the world.
you don’t know the answer,
but you know how to find it.
- love the public school teachers
and the online tutors
and the tired parents,
because we all have the same goal
here, and not all classrooms contain
the usual four corners.
Lauren Hallstrom 