a person's life
because I read your book,
I can hear the song of your life,
I can imagine your flight from
youth, to newly emerging young man,
to pain, to the next road traveled.

You life is now a movie in my mind,
and I will complete the story for you
hundreds of versions rewritten, played out,
crying at some endings, and being jolted from disaster at others.
No...disaster endings do not come to mind for you.

If asked what is the purpose of all the learning,
my answer now might be hollow.
To earn money, to have a house.
I am not an inventor,
I am not a powerful business person, I am not rich.
I can't answer this question with authority.
I am only a teacher and they tell me that all this learning is important.

If I could tell you one thing to be good at for success in your life,
I would say, please learn how to make friends. That great book,
that first primer on success,
"How to Make Friends and Influence People", read that!

If I were Elon Musk, I might have a different answer.
He knows why all this learning is important, but for me,
any learning has yet to really pay off, except I do have a job,
and I might be on the upswing. No learning has paid off really yet.
I am still hand to mouth.

Does learning gain you influence?  
It might, but George Santos might beg to differ.
Rather isn't it how you relate and manipulate
people that gets you where you want to go?
I mean, isn't that the secret ingredient?
Isn't that the one variable all the most successful people have in common?

Will all your learning get you what you want? There is no guarantee.

It's like
a story we can't tell
it's like
we ****** ourselves into pain and risk on purpose.
It's like
we don't look before we leap.
It's like
we run into the fire.

Only now
I am stopping
before the edge of the cliff.
I am not jumping
straight away,
I am looking
over the edge and listening first.

taking a very long listen, I've heard that wind before, no, I am not mesmerized this time. This time I will observe for a while and believe my soul when it runs away from the inside.

writing as an old lady 50
going extinct
white woman dying in a growing world of colors
perpetuate the species
raising my voice in the midst of 20 yr olds
I have to yell louder to get my experience heard
is there any wisdom in my story?
Or did I do it all wrong?

Why do we always bring up God and Satan or wisdom?
There are people who don't believe in that at all.
We talk about it as though it gives us depth,
but everyone talks about it like they have a secret knowledge of God,
Like their walk on the planet has opened hidden passageways
where they've found the answers to life.

It doesn't matter what the new, young people write or think,
they will only be repeating what has always been.
They think they have new thoughts or understandings,
and maybe they can know how to get to Mars when we didn't,
but they won't be doing anything different as humans when they get there.
They will still be human, doomed to feel, crave, want, hope dream for all the same things we have always wanted and come to the same realizations we have always reached.

I'm going to read your poem or your story or your novel and write a response.
Not a response, but a reply, or rather, answer you.

It will be a song in meter and stanza that might flow like a soft conversation.
When I am finished, you will have a time to answer back.

This will go on for a while.

Baltimore will change you. Seen through the eyes, ears, and hearts of Black American, your liberal effort will be read as a white occupation.

It doesn't matter your intentions, if you've meditated on it all year long, if you yell at a black face, you have cast the whip.

You're not allowed to have emotions, you have to subservient yourself to the trauma of your students, your fellow teachers, the parents walking on the street. Your trauma no longer matters. It is not the same. It might not even be exist. Or rather, you're over 50, haven't you processed that **** yet?

Oh, Baltimore will change you. When you came here you wanted to help, you wanted to solve the problem of racism, of less than equal, you wanted to uplift like MLK and make real the sentiments of your 60s parents. Then you met the attitude, the snares as you walked through the Aldi on Orleans Street, the ostracization of your Black colleagues, the Black clicks, the Black power, and the side glances and suspicion waiting for you to be racist and oppressive. The questioning eyes looking at your old white face and grey hair, expecting you to control or belittle the Black man, woman, and child. Why did you come here to teach our children? What do you want with our children?

You face the slow walk of the Black man and woman. Why are they moving so slowly? Don't they know I am in a hurry? Are they doing that on purpose because of the years of white control and oppression? Are they punishing me for all the sins of the Whites? Or is it because that person is big, slow in pace because of the sheer weight they have to carry? Is that racist to think that? Does the butcher move slow at the meat counter because he wants to make me wait? Why am I even thinking this? I never thought this before! Baltimore is changing me.

You face the fast driving and the motocross culture of danger, noise, and recklessness. You meet the street fights our your front door, parents surrounding their children, cheering them on to kick the other 15year old's ***.  You get called a white ***** time and time again simply because you speak your mind. Or...did I do something wrong?  WAS I oppressive? I just wanted to....how can I even breath here? I might do it in a way that hurts the Black community. Why are they that fragile? Are they that fragile?

Baltimore will make you ask, where should I stand as the Black community moves into it's place? It will make you ask, "Why am I defending the white man? Why do I feel a need to play devil's advocate?" But why do I need to feel obliged to step aside for the Black? Isn't that the sentiment I have felt all my life? Move over for the Black. White people have had the lead for too long. Move out of the way for Black people, let them get ahead. Let them get ahead?  Like I hold the keys to the door? We were told (by MLK) that the dream was for us to play side by side, hold hands, walk up or down the mountain together. That is so hard. For both sides. Why are there sides?

A frozen house stilled mid-life,
while the lives within shed
blood from a tear mid-stride.

hearts stopped beating,
loving strokes suspended mid-brush,
her dappling with the voice of another
pulled her love into adultery's pouch.

his seduction cloaked in friendship,
his lie of never leaving,
his deception of true nature,
he could have known he would never love her.

her home barren of family noise,
empty, gutted, a winter's frozen shell.
she will lie now in the out-lands upon the ground,
freezing alone, unforgivable, a harlot, wishing, hoping for death.