Name of Teacher:*___________________________________________
Teacher/Course Evaluation: Fall Semester, Humanities Block (History & English) Hopi High School, Keams Canyon, Arizona, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

_______________ (1) This course was: (A) always different; never boring; sometimes even enjoyable (B) like a sleeping pill, an experience similar to having narcolepsy (C) like being sentenced to a maximum-security penitentiary for a semester; what did I do in a previous incarnation that stored up so much bad karma for me to deserve being here?   (D) a semester living under a totalitarian regime; this teacher would have fit right in with ******’s “Gestapo” (E) what I imagine it would have been like at Herot, Hrothgar’s royal mead hall in Beowulf, whenever the monster Grendel came calling.

_______________ (2) This teacher:  (A) knows how to teach, knows a great deal about this subject and others, creates a classroom atmosphere that resonates with teenagers and truly cares whether I show up ready to learn (B) never remembers my name, let alone my birthday (C) actually hates me and has made several attempts on my life (D) should have his license to teach revoked; can wiring my desk for electric shocks be legal?
(E) often wanders off, leaving us alone in the classroom for as long as 30 minutes at a time while out in the parking lot screaming about aliens and/or Bolsheviks.

_______________ (3) Compared to all other teachers I’ve had since kindergarten, this teacher: (A) is one of the best, certainly in the top 10% (B) has the worst personal hygiene; aren’t teachers required to bathe at least once a month? (C) has the least credibility; he tells me nothing but “lies, ****** lies and statistics” (D) frightens me the most, particularly whenever the moon waxes full (E) is obviously the one most in need of a good 12-step recovery program.

_______________ (4) This teacher’s grading system:   (A) is objective and reflects what I earn; not subjectively based on whether he likes my face or not (B) is based on a point system that is clearly explained and fairly administered (C) is based on assignments that are challenging but not impossibly difficult (D) includes opportunities to earn at least some extra credit (E) A, B, C & D (F) none of these; sometimes I think he pulls my grade out of his ***.

_____________(5) If I could change one thing about this teacher or his class, I'd: (A) change nothing: this teacher belongs in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (B) insist that he use English in the classroom, not that "clicks and pops" sound-effect language he learned while backpacking in sub-Saharan Africa one summer (C) tear down that rice-paper-thin, cardboard wall separating his classroom from the one next door (D) demand that an FBI Trained and Certified Document Examiner review his BIA job application, teaching credential, college transcripts and fingerprint card (E) remove sheep and goats*.

I once had a lover that on the most ordinary of days
Out shopping for underwear
Looked at my reflection in the mirror and said
I love the boy in you
And I love the girl in you
And everything in between

Later they asked me what love is
And I said I think that's what love is
Seeing everything in between the reflection
Seeing somebody clearer than they see themselves
I said tell Me you love every piece of me
The skin I shed
The skin that hates this chest
The “it's a boy” they never said
The “I love yous” they never meant
I've spent so much time trying to find the in between where there's no haircuts
Or funny ways of dressing
Or anything confusing about my chest
I'll just keep choosing to ignore the way they say
You're so beautiful
In the same breath as potential
As if it's a credential for my anatomy

Instead tell me I'm the cutest boy you've ever had in your bed
Tell me my body isn't woman it's just the wild
Tell me flesh is nothing
I'm made of light
Tell me my light is beautiful
Touch my soft
Touch my belly button but not like they ever touched me
Touch me like I'm the kind of soft that can turn hard
A tin roof against the rain
Beating a thunderstorms refrain into music
They told me I have too much bark
Too much bite
I'm too pretty to fight

So tell me instead I'm the softest pebble you've ever skipped across your body
And ripples are born of my feathered fists and my hammering heart
Tell me softness has no gender
Tell me our body's never knew what gender meant
I want to be gender bent over till it breaks
And takes the freighttrain words of haters
But don't you cringe under the jagged teeth of their stares
**** my love into your body and hold it there
Always write a poem in my body
And use the words they spit at us
But instead infuse them with a welcome song to tell my body it's found home
Everything we do rhymes with ****** rhymes with **** rhymes with queer
These labels belong to us
The fear in these labels does not belong to us
I'm here to witness you try to live in a body you call home without trying to run away
I wish my body was made of clay so I could fit it into the box labeled
“I love you no matter what”
Will you love me no matter what

If I want you to bend me over backwards until I break the reflection the mirror tries to make of me
And find it's just glass
Like my see through skin
Try to see through my skin
Tell me you see me
I'll see every piece of you
Soft
Hard
Apart
Together
Girl
Boy
But never in a box
I'll take that box labeled “I'll love you no matter what” and I'll break it down
Leave that truth around your bones
Until you believe it can't break

That truth will be our home and we can live in that between because that's where love is.

I tried to be cordial with inactivity
washing it with weeping juice like a pardoned effigy
but the diamonds of determination were so wrapped in mind debris
that I threw away a fortune in potential

The smiles of the platitudes are louder than their laughs
An appeasing of their attitudes I warrant with the gaffes
of an undertaker's underling bestowing upon epitaphs
another deadened and deprived credential

Seeing days in ways that never did occur to me
Every end a mending by default, a sour recipe
for compromise eroding in a rusty *** of empathy

The dentist rubbed his fingers when he saw my gritted teeth
No sermon on the mount from me, more a mumble on the heath
My incisor is a tack that would support a giant's wreath
Thorns of novocaine will numb my Christmas wish

For the sake of universal order I will freeze a yawn
Mostly harmless said a hitchhiker of Earth so I can spawn
a batch of clones to live on hold where all the battle lines are drawn
I'll zip up and in the universal order I'll languish

Seeing nights in ways that never did occur to me
Every satellite a telecast of fault, a sour recipe
for sleeping juice to boil over in Big Dipper's empathy

Where's a pound of flesh when needed? I've grown tired of these ribs
On the grill of soggy marrow, hungry haunts will have first dibs
Call on William Blake to send the weepers to their cribs
Wishful thinking I'll preserve beneath the floorboards

With a hand in nothing new and an incisor in the usual
intestine chains surround my motivation's hot pursual
Don't read too much into my implied acceptance of a dual
with a messenger of fact's implicit hoards

Seeing days in ways that never did occur to me
Every end a mending by default, a sour recipe
for compromise eroding in an empty *** of sympathy

Sound the bugle for my bed is made, I'm rested for detention
Solitaire I'll play in my confinement for the crime of sought attention
I revolted the philosophers in plugging my intention
I would not concede that lab rats had it worse

The satellites are full and bright, the shadows walk on lakes tonight
I'll dream of sleep but eyes will play me in my bedroom's voided sight
Lay with me and sigh and the elastic laws of nature might
halt the quivering continuum of fate's forsaken course

Seeing nights in ways that never did occur to me
Every channel plays the same old cooking show's ensoured recipe
Compromise a minor seasoning in liver-flavoured empathy

04 15 14

Dare to dream your own dreams.
Dare to live your own life.
No matter how often it seems,
the world’s sending you strife.

Be who you really are.
Don’t follow the crowd.
And even when this seems bizarre,
In the end you’ll be proud.

Follow your own way.
And never back down.
Don’t let your beliefs sway.
Even when they make others frown.

Study hard now and work hard later.
It may not now seem that essential,
but it’ll make you that much greater
and be an added credential.

So dare to dream your own dreams.
Dare to live your own life.
No matter how often it seems,
the world’s sending you strife.

Rejected, contract not renewed
and I hate these people but the rejection still hurts
because no one likes rejection, really even from people we hate and disrespect
which gets lost now because I'm still there and am surrounded by them and
I think I know why this all happened, because I don't fit into the principal's kingdom
where you must have only one drama director and not one and then another one
out there who was just forced out through seniority because she might cause TROUBLE
and it's true I don't fit in because I have gone to excellent schools, even an Ivy, and
I've traveled the world and learned an obscure language and I have so much more
experiences than most of those people could ever imagine having or even wanting

But it's still like the wind has been knocked out of me and now I'm feeling down, so down
and scared, waiting for my next plan--will I be accepted there and what is wrong with
me that I--
must stop these thoughts because they lead me down my dark alley
there was Craig last, who I befriended and tried to love and he could never love
me back and I thought if only I can get him to love me I will feel better and like
I'm Ok in spite of being rejected
and now it's Drew. and I don't like Drew and he kind of likes me
and yet I chase him and spend time with him and I'm not even enjoying
it and he is unpleasant and never says anything nice about me and never smiles
and  is happiest staring at his turtles as they awake from hybernation
and planning his cross country trip that will take all summer combing the country for any national parks he hasn't yet seen
and i yearn for his love and when I've had an awful frustrating time
with him, I ask him when we can get together next because
next time will be better and he looks at me with a stare
and at school a girl comes in at lunch and flirts with him and
i can't stand to be in the same room because its so inappropriate
and his boss struts in wearing high heels and onoe foot in a brace and flirts
and she is married and she gives me resentful, knowing looks
and i don't even like him but this
punch to the gut, this fear now, this not knowing if I'll be accepted back
into the school to get a new credential, the school I left to take this miserable
job. this is driving me crazy like I'm hanging onto a vine, suspended off of a cliff
with water and rocks a thousand feet below and I'm so scared, and every
day cold be another blow and I have only fear and
I must wait and I must build myself up again so I don't chase
Drew, who will only make me feel worse, because he is rude and pushy
as all my friends say and yet I ask to get together with him again.
And I must learn to appreciate myself again so there will be no Drew.
Please no more Drews, or Craigs and the list is quite long.
And one day I do well and ignore him and then as the week progresses
I get tired and it gets worse and I think, that thing, my drug
please I need my drug, and off I go.
I don't need any more drugs.  I need to feel good about me
again, from the inside out
despite the rejection