You came back in 1968
from teaching Kenyans
to speak English
to teach Americans
how to see the world.

A nine-year-old boy
was in your fifth-grade class,
precocious, gifted
and quite full of himself
and ignorance.

It was magical, that connection;
the world-wise teacher
and the barely contained
bolt of potential.
It was his only year of school
where he never missed a day
or dropped a class.

Amazing how subtle,
blunt and gentle you were with him,
tapping walls of arrogance
with a wrecking ball,
allowing him to maintain
his structure
while rocking and rebuilding
his foundation.

You saw the boy
who danced on the the tightrope
between genius and insanity...
and quietly fed the jukebox.

He wanted to write;
you gave him Frost and cummings.
He yearned to draw;
you showed him Van Gogh.
He thirsted to learn;
you taught him how
to slake his parched mind.

He left your classroom,
but you continued to teach him.
You still do,
nearly fifty years later.

The last time he saw you,
he hurt you,
in that casual,
caustic way
of the high-school senior.
Still, when his nieces and nephews
with his last name
passed through,
you'd ask them
how he was doing,
and asked them to tell him
to stop in, or call.

He never did,
so he's now reduced
to offering words
you would have loved to read
in their full futility
telling you
that you
are
immortal.

I do not have any pain
I did not complain
How do we get out?
We met by a miracle
Let's flee to the West
This we can do
For the truth will **** us here
Our truth will end us
You are my life
I am your life
They built a wall round us
Round our city
To keep us in
But they cannot stop us
Will never control our hearts
Nor our will to escape
And prove them wrong
We will break their prison
And breach the wall

With the first sign of rebirth
Came the gift of time, extended
In its renewal and revival, further
Offering the restoration of friendly relations
All done as an act of reconciliation between progress
As well as forgiveness asked of our mothers, everyday
Within such gifts intended for the common crowd
It is at the stroke of the halcyon hour
That we forget our sorrows and crumble like bricks
What is of this sad ending that we talk of, intentionally
That plagues the essence of the mind which is white as snow and trembling
Only cloudy days can show us the purity of ice
When the clouds do subside, the sweetness that preside
All talk is forced into stony silence under the dark night
Through the mad-sort of palace of time
Where there is a time to withdraw into the study of history
Ashes to ashes as well as fire to fire
Dwelling in a cold curlicle of a silent galvanized gate at a cemetery
Behind a rose garden, where the woodpeckers beak at the windowpane
Rusted beyond recognition broken into windy submission
Such things are built for no purpose and no future promise
Only to sustain posterity and labour
Not to make use of Earthly resources
An old man still waits for the rain
Saying that he is hiding behind the arras of an isolated house
Where the sepulchre is hidden under a rock tattered by zephyr
A string of creeper prostrate themselves, whimpering
That ostensibly grow, under the shadow of a thatched roof
Only to never be seen again in daylight
Of rebirth and redemption
Such is the creeper in the daylight
That lives in utter recluse and retreat

Ted Slade • (my cousin)
Withernsea, Holderness, East Yorkshire

Last night the sea ripped the beach from its bed.
We heard the screams
but know too well not to interfere
in these family disputes.
In the morning we gathered to look,
ghouls at a death,
the sea at our feet, calm,
sated, gulls riding at anchor on it shoulders.

The meadow’s gone the same way,
yard by yard, year by year.
Now the house sways on the brink.
When he saw his rose bushes
scattered down the cliff, Jack cried.
Finally we moved out when
the garden shed was launched
one winter’s night.
Very Important Persons
brought their sympathies,
and went away nodding.
Perhaps we’ll become little islanders.
Though surely not.
... New Atlanteans at least.

Ted Slade • 1939-2004

911 Carousel
by Michael R. Burch

“And what rough beast ... slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”—W. B. Yeats

They laugh and do not comprehend, nor ask
which way the wind is blowing, no, nor why
the reeling azure fixture of the sky
grows pale with ash, and whispers “Holocaust.”

They think to seize the ring, life’s tinfoil prize,
and, breathless with endeavor, shriek aloud.
The voice of terror thunders from a cloud
that darkens over children adult-wise,

far less inclined to error, when a step
in any wrong direction is to fall
a JDAM short of heaven. Decoys call,
their voices plangent, honking to be shot ...

Here, childish dreams and nightmares whirl, collide,
as East and West, on slouching beasts, they ride.

Published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea, Mindful of Poetry, Gostinaya and Scholasticus/Fullosia Press. Keywords/Tags: 911, war, violence, retribution, twin towers, terror, terrorism, east, west, dreams, nightmares, error

Mountains,
roiling across,
just as sea tempests toss'd.
Frost'd froth on brackish peaks churn
the sky.