Acadia K

The Sky is the Limit (Poetry Project)

By: Acadia King

Table of Contents

Poem Type Title

Inauguration Poem A Thought

Ode Ode to Backstage

Abandoned Farmhouse Inspired The Cottage That Was Once Alive

Free Verse Poem Another Summer

Epistolary Poem Dear Jack

Love that Boy Poem Love that Stage

Free Choice Scissors

Free Choice To A Place We’ve Never Gone

Limerick The Splendor Blender Rat

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Inauguration Poem (A Thought) 3

Oh say does our multi-colored, vibrant, work-in-progress art project that is our country, the United States of America.
But the keyword is united. United. The thing that Abraham Lincoln strived for almost 200 years ago.
What has it come to? All of the problems we have today? No.
Instead of being doused in our failures, and our struggles, why not rise to the occasion of our imperfect nation?
Anyone can. A child who is just trying to make her way through school.
A President who is just trying to lead their country, anyone.
Anyone can help, with just a thought.
Just a thought can save someone from making the biggest mistake of their life.
Just a thought could lead to a spark that could ignite the light that could be the fire that burns away all hatred and replaces it
with hope.
No thought is not worth being thought, or validated. So what are we going to do with our minds? Wait for others to change
the world for us?
Or have the courage to think for ourselves?

2 hours. The smell of the powdery foundation and face paint fills the room. A nice lady does
my makeup as I sit in silence and think about how nervous I am. Four shows in two days.
You can do this.

90 minutes. I get my five piece costume on and chat with my friends. The anticipation fills
the air. It spreads faster than a deadly disease.

1 hour. Mic time. I get an elastic strap around my stomach fitted, the box hooks on to my
costume. Oh no. The worst part. The mic tape goes on my neck and cheek, the tacky
adhesive sticks to my skin. Ow! I wince as my friend puts the mic over my ear. My first
production was her last. Now she works at my theater.

30 minutes. The director comes and talks to us. “Look at the audience, don’t get
dead-faced. Improv if you have to.” If the stage is my battlefield, backstage is my military
fort. The director is our general. The cast is the soldiers.

15 minutes. Do the ritual. Knock on wood. Don’t you dare say “the Scottish play”. Recite 4
the Actor’s Prayer. I gesture a thumbs up to my friend across the room. She’s opening the
show. I say “break a leg” to all of my castmates. This won’t be a perfect play. No play is
perfect. But it’ll be fun. All plays are fun.

There was an emerald green cottage that sat on the edge of a lake 5
It was falling apart at the seams
As it seems, the house was older than old, and emptier than empty
The damp bedding from the humidity
The duct-taped holes in the ground and the antique matchboxes in the kitchen said it all
And the photos, the framed photo collages covered the walls
The sepia-tinged picture of a baby in an orange life jacket in the lake, back when the cottage was alive
The lively pictures of kids with big hairdos and the old wooden sign that said, “Paradise”
It wasn’t a paradise anymore
And the picture of two little girls in their bathing suits, their eyes frozen in time, back when the cottage was
alive
And the colorful, bright picture of two little girls sitting on the rock wall that was behind the cottage
shockingly resembled those two little girls in the grainy photo in the frame
But it couldn’t be
No one knows what happened to the life in the cottage
Perhaps it was just a candle, it just burned away, but no one knows for sure
But it was a paradise, back when the cottage was alive

It’s a weightless feeling

No more waking up before the Earth has awoken

Not a care in the world is expressed in the summer

The Sun dances with the sky and the water, and you can’t help but join in as you make friends with July

You see your cousins, they shriek your name happily as they run down the stone stairs that leads to the
emerald green cottage that sits at the edge of a lake

The beating Sun shows no mercy on you as you rehearse for the summer musical for nine hours every week
and play games with the young kids, who run in the wind and try to climb the willow branches

They get on your nerves, sure, but there is nowhere else you’d rather be

You sing songs with the people who’ve become your sisters, even though you aren’t related to them at all

You share your birthday with your brother, grandmother, cousins, and friends, but you don’t mind

You’re another year older

And finally when the first day of school comes around again, and the green leaves begin to say goodbye, you
think about the weightless feeling as you get on the school bus

Another summer has come and gone 6
Another summer has been cherished

Letter to Jack

Dear Jack,
The noises in your head are loud.

I can hear your words yelling on the paper as I read your poems.
You went from a chick who just cracked out of the egg, to a soaring eagle with
your poetry.
You write what’s in your mind, without thinking about it first.
You just let you ideas flow like a river.

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Love That Boy Inspired Poem

Love that stage
Like a bear loves honey
I said I love that stage
Like a bear loves honey
Love to sing and dance and laugh and cry
On that stage all day long
With it’s bright lights shining on me

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Scissors 9

Are you all ready for your first day of kindergarten?
The mother said brightly
The young boy touched his pocket, where his new blue kid’s scissors
were
Yes
Cut, cut, cut, stab
Cut, cut, cut, stab
I’m all ready
Stab, stab, stab, blood
Welcome to kindergarten, boys and girls!

Let’s go 10
Don’t pack anything but a pencil and paper
We’re off
Away
We’re away
And we can do anything and say
Anything we want
So…
Come to my land
And make it our land
From the rivers made of gold
To the deep, dark canyons
It’s as exciting and scary as the unknown that lies before us
We can go back to the blood and remember where we’ve been, we can hear the crash and boom of the thunder
We can go to a place we’ve never gone before

Limerick

There once was a rat named Bob
Who worked at Starbucks for a job
He was a splendor
But he got stuck in a blender
And now he’s nothing but a blob

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Poem Guide: .Each poem is listed followed by literary devices and figurative language found in each

Inaugural Poem: free form, metaphors, alliteration, allusion, internal rhyme,
hyperbole
Ode: Imagery, dialogue, otomatopea,
Epistolary: Similes, metaphors
Season Poem: Personification, imagery
Abandoned Farmhouse: Figurative language, imagery, homophone?

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