The Opposites Game by Brendan Constantine

My friend Stephen sent me this link to this amazing animated poem by his friend Brendan Constantine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO6527S5JOU

This is the poem:

This day my students and I play the Opposites Game
 with a line from Emily Dickinson. My life had stood
 a loaded gun, it goes and I write it on the board,
 pausing so they can call out the antonyms –
 
 My Your
 Life Death
 Had stood ? Will sit
 A Many
 Loaded Empty
 Gun ?
 
 Gun.
 For a moment, very much like the one between
 lightning and it’s sound, the children just stare at me,
 and then it comes, a flurry, a hail storm of answers –
 
 Flower, says one. No, Book, says another. That's stupid,
 cries a third, the opposite of a gun is a pillow. Or maybe
 a hug, but not a book, no way is it a book. With this,
 the others gather their thoughts
 
 and suddenly it’s a shouting match. No one can agree,
 for every student there’s a final answer. It's a song,
 a prayer, I mean a promise, like a wedding ring, and
 later a baby. Or what’s that person who delivers babies?
 
 A midwife? Yes, a midwife. No, that’s wrong. You're so
 wrong you’ll never be right again. It's a whisper, a star,
 it's saying I love you into your hand and then touching
 someone's ear. Are you crazy? Are you the president
 
 of Stupid-land? You should be, When's the election?
 It’s a teddy bear, a sword, a perfect, perfect peach.
 Go back to the first one, it's a flower, a white rose.
 When the bell rings, I reach for an eraser but a girl
 
 snatches it from my hand. Nothing's decided, she says,
 We’re not done here. I leave all the answers
 on the board. The next day some of them have
 stopped talking to each other, they’ve taken sides.
 
 There's a Flower club. And a Kitten club. And two boys
 calling themselves The Snowballs. The rest have stuck
 with the original game, which was to try to write
 something like poetry.
 It's a diamond, it's a dance,
 the opposite of a gun is a museum in France.
 It's the moon, it's a mirror,
 it's the sound of a bell and the hearer.
 
 The arguing starts again, more shouting, and finally
 a new club. For the first time I dare to push them.
 Maybe all of you are right, I say.
 
 Well, maybe. Maybe it's everything we said. Maybe it’s
 everything we didn't say. It's words and the spaces for words.
 They're looking at each other now. It's everything in this room
 and outside this room and down the street and in the sky.
 
 It's everyone on campus and at the mall, and all the people
 waiting at the hospital. And at the post office. And, yeah,
 it's a flower, too. All the flowers. The whole garden.
 The opposite of a gun is wherever you point it.
 
 Don’t write that on the board, they say. Just say poem.
 Your death will sit through many empty poems.

Writing is how I make my way through the thicket of what we’ve made of this planet we’re on. It takes me a long time and lots of words. Social media mystifies me. How do so many people have so much to say, so quickly, and with such resolute certainty? Read more about Susan >