Let politicians claim virtue,
and abandon honest men.

Let the poor inherit promises,
and be comfortable servants.

Let the famous enjoy advantage,
and carry no favors in heaven.

Let physicians prescribe hope,
and a worthy price be paid.

Let education forge solutions,
and notorious liars lose favor.

Let simple humanity be rewarded,
and tyranny reap the sorrow of death.

A sinner first, and, worse, the worst backslider,
I've learnt a lot from list'ning to the spider.
Thanks be to God for sending such a teacher
To teach His dumbest, ignorantest creature.
I ascertain by methods of my guider
That God Himself (my Saviour) is my rider.

Schools’, free-ish U.S.
budget cuts GALORE, burnout
Teachers:  in terror   |  are trying

I want this life to read like an intricate novel. I don’t want to keep sitting at a computer all day while the romance of life slips through my arthritic fingers. They are meant to write beautiful prose that flow over our souls and cover them with golden warmth.

Yet they are tippy-tappy typing away at exhausting, unimaginative emails with signatures like “warmest regards” to cover how calloused my heart has become.

Sitting in this comfortable space behind a giant screen where nothing can hurt me is crippling.  We were meant to embrace the love this earth holds us in. We are supposed to bathe in rivers, meet strangers in different cities, and learn to fall. My knees should have scrapes, my elbows bruised from stumbles I take on dirt roads and motorbikes.

While my bones are intact, my life is what is breaking.

Intent on the final bell ring
declaring spring for reals
as we feel every inch
a bag of hammered turds

You will have heard the crack
in every colleague’s voice this term,
felt the glut of panics
that the journey home may be in a hearse

Still, it could be worse,
and when the rear view
shows a dwindling, darkening school,
we’ll spend two weeks pondering how,
exactly

Counterpoint:
I love you lot.

You colleagues and loves who despise this
alongside me
so when my foot slips or knee gives
you are at my shoulder, my elbow

with a Kit-Kat or quick jab
about being old and ****
so giggles lift the misery
of ignorant, blind and fruitless bosses

while our loss seems their gain for now
I am bound to remember this refrain:
We’re not gonna take it

So, my brothers and twisted sisters
get those pitchforks ready,
sharpen in the dark,
keep being artisans

for when the time comes,
the spreadsheets won’t even be worth
the cold nothing they’re typed on
but your healing hands will

You’ll look close for all its feints,
its lies of needing you
being lost without
while the fingers on your windpipe tighten
and those tears come in place of shouting

loud, steady, drip-drip mention
of blissed futures,
dispatched, ***** pasts,
the present full
of passive aggression
where passivity is too nuanced

you’ll still be there with open arms
and a heart dark with hope,
but that tickle-whisper in your skull
is not just the concussion
not just

Today I began to hem,
rein in the threads that grow free
when left unstitched

I ticked a set of books
and, though I love my charges,
my heart hurt

My language is another,
my experience of this globe
unutterably different,
though geographically the same

And I want to help them play the game, I do,
but I don’t trust those
telling me how to

My instincts,
honed by humans I trust, unless
I’m lost in my own Truman Show,
show me the right way to go,
divergent  from this current shitshow

The pedagogy of care
is somewhere way, way
over there

I know which fat bells are tolling
with “Pupils come first” on lips
like a benediction spoke by those
whose fingers dip the collection box

But it can wait.

Piles of marking like ancient pillars
meant for Samson to do his thing
remain upright

Because a little tight in this metaphor,
Samson is for cooking a roast
playing video games
and watching the last gasp of TV,
anyone with me?