For the second half of class today I led an activity where the students used magnetic poetry to generate poems. They split into groups of 3 or 4 and worked putting the words up on the board. I gave them the titles for each of the poems they had to write: "Cambridge Summer," "Love Poem," and "Respect." I thought it was going to fall on its face, but they actually really liked it. They came up with some great, funny poems. Some of my favorites:

Cambridge Summer

Sex will soon appear through harmony
with deep music



Love Poem

love blows away my breast size
like romantic garden winter sky
rhythm through luscious beauty
lust smooth sugar can mean sweat strong music

("love blows away my breast size"?)


Cambridge Summer

crashing parties
getting sun
going 2 the club
watch after your eternity
you can over come


Respect

we give respect
ask for respect
and show respect
but never SEE it


Then there was this one group of boys who just got really vulgar:

Cambridge Summer

part my breasts
raw luscious girl
manipulate me through bare romantic love
tongue on me blow


Love Poem

lick my enormous pink pole
hang beneath your black moan
lather my butt


Respect

she's a sex goddess
tenderize his moist respectful pole
kiss on a soaking big breast
respect is good

"Lather my butt." At least their images were strong. In all fairness to them, it was tempting to write stuff like that. Before class, Adam and I were playing around and came up with "blow my big skin candle." Our mentor teacher at one point put up "bleed puppy meat," which was kind of scary...

Oh John. Anyway, went shopping with Mark and Adam this afternoon at Downtown Crossing and Newbury St. Before that I had fallen asleep on a couch in Gutman Library with a toothpick in my mouth and one leg up on a table. Mark's really cool--he told me all about his situation before coming here, which is vastly different from mine. He basically came up here to get his life back together after some bad shit he was going through. He came to Harvard for the name, but we talked about how little our program is actually connected to Harvard. We're not even that connected to the Ed School. Our program feels pretty isolated. Mark has very old eyes. The skin under them is tight and kind of leathery, like a cowboy.

I got caught out in the rain AGAIN. It rains so much here, I'm not used to it. I wanted to go for a run, too, but there was a lot of lightning and stuff, and by the time it died down I was so hungry and it was dark out. I really meant to go for a run. I did walk about five miles, though.

It's going to feel good to sleep in tomorrow. I might spend the day watching movies at the Church Street theater.