You sat beside me and spoke so sweetly
Let your hands run up my back ever so discreetly
I felt you dancing along my vertebrae
To the tunes of your own words that mould like clay
It took all of me to lift my sleeves
And show you my scars, the reason why everyone leaves
You titled your head to get a better view
Pointed out every dark depressant hue
Then you let your tongue slip
To tell me they're not the wreckage of skin, shadow and ship
That they're not remotely close to how bad they could be
Little did you know how much those scratches mean to me
You spoke of a girl you once knew
Like a Broadway play acting on cue
Mine were nothing compared to hers
In your words, mine are like nicks from spurs
You left me blowing in an empty breeze
While I whirl around like branches falling from trees
Nicks and cuts becoming apparent
My chest transforming transparent
Now I sit curled in a blood soaked bed sheet
Unwillingly trying to compete
Keeping my bones warm
While emulating thoughts swarm
To think you were going to be the one to make my bed
To think you were going to be the place to rest my head
As if I don't hate my inflections enough
You turned into a wolf and puffed and huffed
Blowing me down like a house made of straw
Then you sat back and laughed as I crawled
Letting the stones cut my upper thigh
You asked me what it feels like to die
I told you that it feels a lot like this
And those tiny little nicks shouldn't be dismissed
Because every wound bleeds
It's a part of sufferings deed
And soon enough they'll bleed you dry
By then it sure won't help to cry
You will be the death of me
And only then will you see
That those nicks and cuts mean so much to me
And that they are as bad as they could be

Poem 3
How to raise kids

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

I got into to teaching to make a difference,
To add some joy to a kids existence,
I knew, so well, the hurt and pain
That kids in secondary school sustain
The tears and the fears and the dread and the...
"Ahahahaha! Look at his Nicks!! He thinks he's got Nikes but he's wearing Nicks!"
And how it switches you off and makes you not care,
Because you just don't want to go back there.
So, you wander into town to HMV
Til your parents feel let down when you only got an E
Until you failed Art and Graphics and Literacy
But at least you got an A in history...
Because academic subjects are "more important"

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

So I left 6th form and I needed change
And wanted to go to somewhere strange
(And new)
Somewhere away from all the drama
At 19 I went by myself to Ghana
"God bless our homeland Ghana
And make our nation great and strong,
Vow to defend forever
The cause of Freedom and of Right"
And I taught
Maths and English
With no books
And no training
And no observing
And I was ******* at it... Really bad
But somehow, i felt the change
Just because I cared and they cared

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

A few years later I started teachin.
GTP, hands on, straight in.
My teaching mentor was called Mr Hickey,
He smoked a pipe and drank down whiskey
(In school)
My first proper job was Bradford inner city
It was a bit rough and the buildin was ******
There we had a guy who was a lazy old ****
And he had kids tracing instead of learning Art
When I first got there I was overwrought
These weren't like the training lessons that I taught
These kids had opinions. They needed to engage...
To be taught in a way that suited kids of their age
I nearly gave up, because I felt so scared
But at the end of the day, I knew that I still cared

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

In my 3rd year I had this year 11 class
They wanted a good lesson and they wanted to pass
But they needed convincing and I nearly cried
So I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried
To listen
And react
To change
And Adapt
And those kids made me better
And for 3 years I got better
Our grades were sky high
The kids wanted to try
They wanted learn, they wanted to know "why"
But I got to the top and I needed to fly
Because I needed somewhere that I could ask the "why"

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

You have those moments sometimes in life, where you know that a decision is important, but you don't know why and you don't know which way is the right way to go with it. This was that point for me. Sat in the interview, saying I wanted to pull out but letting them convince me to stay. That was the point, I think where everything changed.

2010. New job. New government.

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

I was head of Art and I got noticed
Within a year I got promoted
Faculty leader of creative skills
This is the part where it really kills
What do you do when you just aren't wanted
When people are angry that you're there
When all of your decisions seem to be haunted
By the ghost of a culture where they just don't care
Where nastiness and gossip always bite
Resting in the coffin of a lost tradition
Kids so bored they're turning white
Beaten down to bored submission
And everyone seems to have given up the fight
But they're still convinced that their way's "right"

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

After so much pain, we were getting through it
We realised there was much more to it
No more easy working out of booklets
(The teaching equivalent of rhyming couplets)
But every time you made a shift
The goal posts seemed to start to drift
And this all caused a further rift
The final one I couldn't lift

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

Gossip and lies caused by others stress
Creates a catastrophic mess
Turns people's lives upside down
Gives off the sense that they're a clown
They're trying. They're just really down
Simply trying not to drown
Marriage ending
Friends unfriending
Children's lives are slowly bending
House and finance are up-ending
Mediation sessions need attending
Everything seems to need mending
And the pain seems to be never-ending

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

Professional life vs Personal life
Professional strife = Personal strife
Personal wife goes through professional strife
Personal strife =

"I understand what you're going through, but we need to think about the learners."

Stress in teaching is the expectation
Work life balance has no correlation
The pressures of a confused nation
Makes teachers into the poor relation

Goodbye btec, goodbye vocation
Hello Gove and his minds creation
Goodbye Gove and hello Morgan
Hiding behind a gritty slogan
Creating the pressure of pointless change
For teachers to correct and rearrange

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

But here's the thing. It's not their fault.
Sure, they've no idea MPs
They've less common sense than a piece of cheese
But all MPs really do is set
Some criteria that need to be met
A league table
Academies
Appraisal
Curriculums
It's nothing new. They've always done it
But it's given to schools to interpret
We don't lose money, we just get judged
We need conviction that can't be budged
We need to get a message out
To every parent, round about
And what this message needs to say
Is "we aren't doing extra maths today,
We're going to go outside and play
Because whatever MPs say
We'll do what's right for the kids
And here's why it's right you know
Cause we want to see your children grow
We're not just for levels, grades, progress
We're also here to relieve stress
We're also here to make your child feel
That happiness is something real
That in spite of all the crap you see
You can become head of art when you failed gcse."
Learn People skills
Determination
Creativity
Imagination
Honesty
Integrity
Sen­sitivity
And empathy
It's not an easy sell I know
You can't measure how people grow
You can't report or give a grade
But they're qualities that are heaven made
And maybe think the same for teachers
We're all very caring creatures
We care about how kids are raised
We don't need to be constantly appraised
Default 100%?!?
Like energy is heaven sent
Like when your kids are down with flu
You just man up, there's work to do
When you've got a quality person who just needs backing
Why give pressure and then threaten with sacking?

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

School - this week mark all your books
I need them up to date so I can look

Teacher - I've got to take my daughter swimming
I've got to see my son try winning

School - read through your teaching standards mate
And leave your children at the gate

End of the week the books are done
But head and deputies are overrun
"We'll have to put these books aside
To push our children down the slide"

And good for them. They work really hard. It's not a job to take lightly and they deserve to be there. But they don't have the time to step back and think "big picture"

Let's flip it round and just imagine

Teacher - I'm sorry, I'm afraid I'm ill
School - you can't be ill the learners will fail
Teacher - I need some patience, I need some time
School - the kids need work which is sublime
Don't they deserve that? Don't you think?
Do you really want your learners to sink?

And there it is. The teacher guilt.
Because that's the way that we've been built
We care too much
We try too much
We give too much
We work too much
And we lose too much
We get ideas above our station
About how this job is a vocation
When we stop and look around
The evidence just can't be found
Someone tells me what to teach
Someone tells me how to teach it
Someone tells me how to plan
Someone tells me when to plan it
Someone tells me how to mark
Someone tells me when to mark it
We work to targets, get appraised
Residuals to get profiles raised
It's industry. I rest my case.

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

Or, put it another way.

I just think that teaching has lost all its common sense. And it's kindness. It behaves like an industry which is about getting results and meeting targets. There's nothing that measures people's happiness or how deeply moved or affected someone is by what they've learned. It just checks that they learned it. And we are given this guilt trip. That it's about children and that we are affecting their lives if we don't meet targets. We give up more and more because "teaching is a vocation"  "it's about kids", and yet schools use cover supervisors, cut subjects, limit choices etc to save money and get results. So the profession behaves like an industry but the teachers have to give their lives to it like its a vocation. It's not a vocation. At all. It's a job.

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

Axt would I, I sed yah soyam

Signing a song played in the white noise that surrounds me

nights like these past 7043,

Who chounted en chant em, enchantemgood

So no we are at what is a befinning place.
beginning (90's too ****, U2 too Northern Euro,
Green Day, Coolio,
Noise to a message dying to be heard
welcome to another
imaginary garden in an ever expanding mind

field of unthinkable things,
back then

we have whiteout but it doesn't work here

My culture had near simultaneous eruptions of supermarkets

and Fords.

This guy, his culture had near simultaneus disruptions of progress and
interruptions of information
some os were lost in the middle synchrony
instance if I cationic plus or minus
simaltan

Oh, I get it. You, dear reader, have been
out of it.
We went public with the entire plan for public
key distribution,
through six palanced stacks of energy stores

Chakra, chi, science make ya think eh. Polarize, see

everything groovy --no
[contemprayery idle intense ify AI keep us current]

lie, good, no lie is always safe. Don't wanna stumble any souls.

I was mentioned, my being a speaker in a story, I was said
to have said something, upon a time,
on the cover of the Rolling Stone,

I witnessed a lie being told and said my ears weren't garbage cans,
like a brainwashed cult

no, **** I was a cultivated follower of a confessed
follower cultivator.

I bloom when I imagine being treated as a mushroom,
I never paid much attention,
I never felt
insane
but
I can imagine
wee whatifs crept in… aha

The Olde Deluder, Satan, Act

that, a tiny gleam, a single ATP gone ADP

but there was light. A story I lived is now being told
without me,
oy vey Jah knowaddamean.

There was a wiseman, who,
by his wis-dom saved a city, and no one knew
that same wiseman's name,

proverbs are intentional games, the rules,
hiding a thing, done by God, glory ifies him
seeking out a matter, done by a being translated king,
transmutes that seeking into honor

Honor is hard to compare to the war flavored twists,
knots and tangles where woof and warp held

long long long before war was imagined, honor was.

A medal of honor for valor, what does it mean?

Leonard Wood got one. For his part in solving
the Apache problem.
He also,

Flash I had my wires crossed, in a way, it may
enlighten.
You see, I had thought that I had read Leonard Wood,
be cause I had imagined he was in New Jersey, but that
was Lord Amherst, Jeff

He tweerted ( wrote in a letter on paper we've a fact simile):
"to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race."

From <https://www.umass.edu/legal/derrico/amherst/lord_jeff.html>

Could be the source of the whole shores of triple ease retirement lure/trap/moneymoneymoney makeit fakit

I asked once, who's to blame and whose to blame,
samesame came an answer, I sware, quick as

next, twixt being and being possible,

realize

we do change things, in time, which,

if we can agree, is limited for us,
to now, no thens behind

mere, mere, mere ifs and whens ahead

be

--so there's been music all along
life's the song

skip a decade, like skippin' a grade

grad Harvard at a prepubescent 12

If I had a Hammer time, one message

one valiant try to be will smith,

Live and Learn, old man, say the dude on the radio
in he's hammaheadphones, cain't touch

Bomb. Jesus lent me Jael's hammer,
radioman nailed it.

If I had a hammer was the prayer,

MC, he was the Godsmacked nail in the coffin

Dark inside gothish messages hurgle and gurgle
guts twisted in freak pride love hate list lust

dichotomies of choice in ever learning
good citizenship worth honor and glory

of the sort men dare to die for, facing darkness,
the NULL set ***** and ***** and *****

This ain't gravity tuggin me,
this is that monster who lives forever in top forty radio

When/then Radioman emerges, Like the Mighty Quinn from

deep beneath Gibson's darkest ever imagined ICE wall…

What's on? (ellipses, do those mean POV shift or selah?)

I forget, s still all alchemistry t'me, if allyagots ahammass,

realize, if it matters, t'me, bubble bustin' need no nail.

I gotti'd a hamma, gonna hamma in the moan

O.G., mighty man of valor, where'dyew arise from?

We, the integrated us, non autonomous, inarrogant
We were dancin' to that I'm a Loser, Baby

so why don't cha killme, knowwad i'msayin

This old man been wandern in the desert far far far
side the madding crowd
making minced
meet
broken spirit. we goin together to a re-pair place

at the center of you'n'all you know, yo bubble but

--- everlearning everclear outlawed, good lawed
--- moon shine spiritment lauded out loud
--- the world all ways works when a garden is

beyond the pale,
Irish
rye whiskey, wheat bread liqui
if I were an
old gay ninties guy drinking ***** laudnum
singin'

on the corner with the hourus girl's c

Making the Con Next Ion, watchathank,
is it The Nineties A to Z , ending wit, it’s a hard
knawks life, or

a Bohr-TED talk or
a video of Schrödinger's  
verdamte dead cat?

Or am I surrounded by so great acloud of witnesses that some times I spend

simply hummin' along, life's beat me to the ground,

which gladly,
I'm so glad, I'm glad, I'm glad which

loses its meaning if you never experienced such a fall
ending in absorption of it all.
Ginger Baker, slam that cymbal, CRASH1

Life, in every key, there's a clue. Some where,
there's a lock on a true thing we need

to, eventually, know all things.

Keywords lost givitawaygivitawaygit it back tenfo'

Black spirit-filled tongue talkin' grandpa friend of
Johnny Walker, Red not Black,

He challenged me ye see. I recall what was on TV.
Nixon sayin' he,
honest he,
anti-****** he,
bombin invadin he was Notacrook, the super hero
he imagined

Bio is building energy, all the time does is
test the effort.

Is life lived this way worth the effort?
if/then/else

Who chose, integrated me, all the masks and voices I have accepted as ideas that can have apiece of me.

BTW, kids, even if an angel of light asks you to take a little piece of my heart, don't

yer killin me and I know where the next story started,

you are lost without me, fretnot, I'm the way

I heard that, that's no claim I mist'tok as my response.

Deeper, are we absobbing any thing, deeper tincture
of time, t'me see

POV
SameYesTodayForever (SYTF) protocols have been in place, as far as we know,

since words made sense naturally, eons ago, at least.

If you want my future then forget my past
musing medium messages sayin

what the hell? A game, you sayin' life's a game?

Ja, was oder vice nicks versus universal soldier godlet

Jump when I jump, remember… don't cry

I woulda danced with wolves to have changed
one mind that followed me

beyond that point,
no return, is such a mortal POV, you see
as far as you cansee

Deep. the gem. all the meaning ever was was
in that gem.

Dare me for no reason? Is that reasonable,
ration my tears to test my mettle

I went mad in 1995, have I made that plain?
Things crumbled around me for ten years,

I was helped by hoping I knew a truth about those
manifested imaginary gems
given kings and potentates
said to possess great powers and the meaning og every mystery unknown to man

eh, say again
gems
given kings and potentates
said to possess great powers and the meaning OhGEE every mystery unknown to man

lies lies lies they all were lies lies lies lies

I told you so, and it is still sweet to say
you know

You heard it all before, greatest test story ever told.
That was no test.
this is.

Jump when I jump, remember… don't cry

Epic stories deserve more than mere words,
but, you know, click,

words are what we make things from.

Tell me your stories,
she woulda seemed to whisper, woulda drained me drownd me
in just if I'd love linked

to the money machine of your dreams

had I not rode the grey dog outa Nashville,
back in '82,

I'da missed seein' flyover country that feels like mine,
when I take this POV.