#5: Friday Irony

I know I said I wanted to take a break from writing about teaching, but today was kind of a frustrating day and I couldn’t help myself.

This is a poem called a cinquain, apparently, because the stanza or stanzas are all 5 lines long. The form also has to follow a specific syllabic count per line (2,4,6,8,2) and a specific stressed syllable count as well (1,2,3,4,1). I don’t know why the last line shouldn’t consist of a line of iambic pentameter–that way the syllabic stress count, as well as the number of lines in the stanza, would all count to five. I don’t make the rules.  I got the syllable count.  I’m not sure about these stresses, but I am sure about the stressors that inspired the poem.

Friday Irony

The end
of my bad-ass
work week concludes with some
teenagers, most of whom cannot
listen.

I find
myself angry
while I’m introducing
the antithesis of anger:
Buddha.