hidden in
history and
buried under
layers upon
layers of
sediment

lithified and
cemented
in the dark
no uplift
no melting

locked away
in a vault
with no
combination
no key no code

resting silent
in a file in a
cardboard box
under a table
in some well
kept well lit
office building

clinging to
cobwebs in a
safe musty
basement
behind the
water heater

there lies
everything
i've felt every
thing i've
ever wanted
to be

Visit to the land of antiquity
Kept alive through words
Best describes the tales
Which were narrated once
Reading them
And transported there
Fascinated by legends
Ageless and frozen in time
A fascinating word museum
Takes us back to antiquity

To the Anti-American Teacher…We Knew You Were Pro-World

A clause in your contract slated your signature for patriotism.
You never signed, they never checked, but you took down your flag
after that.
They  didn’t check that either.
So, you stripped and tacked and taped and striped all the flags
from all the world to the walls.

On the east, sat Uraguay, and Paraguay, and Peru.
On the west, we went to Austria, and Hungary, and Bangladesh
for good measure.
But the north wall was your northern star – the shining one
among the rest.
The Chinese stars of social class contrasted against the five-pointed red one, the
one next to the ending of a Tsar in a February Revolution, a marking point found – not in our textbooks – but in all the places you have been.

Oh, the places you’ll go, you began.

In Israel, you had gone in your college years, and you learned of bamboo
tattoos in Thailand, but Korean was a class you completed in
France of all places, and I never had the chance to see the locations of
the south wall.

You were fired.

Over night, they tore you from the walls, lone of which, they left the
tape tacked up in four corners, a collection in each place of a flag
we once saw before us. In my desk, you slipped a map inside.

Oh, the places you’ll go, you wrote.

Such a sorrowful tune.

The French (History) Teacher

You’re not actually French. You just brought in a French textbook,
told us you wanted to bring in a World War I pistol instead, but this will have to do.
They say we didn’t help them during the war, that Paris was never taken, that we may, in fact, have lost our minds between the trenches, the gas, and the bombs.
N’est ce pas?
I only touch my face to remind myself that it is still there, and – beneath it – is a mind that may not be my own. When I say this to the class, you handed me the gas mask, right in time for a smile.
It was old paper in my hands, and it was easier to ask when I put it on,
but harder to hear when you responded, au fait.
My French grandmother never believed in that.
But I finally understand Bogart in Casablanca when he says his German is rusty.
Oh, mon ami.
If I kissed you for the last time, I knew it wouldn’t be written down.

Fukushima Daiichi

You told us about the samurai ***** that day,
why the child-emperor drowned, how folklore affected the shore.
The thinnest male I’d ever seen pulled out a blunt and smoked.
Everyone else focused on you, Kasa Professor,
but I trailed over the class with his breath, kept
my eyes on the clipboard you passed around, “For
relief efforts.” You never spoke. Only explained.
As an English major, I knew you would be an exclamation mark.
As an English major in the History of the Samurai, I didn’t know you would be studying the I.R.S.
The swords were scarier than the men, yet their ghosts were on a crab’s back.
I imagine my ghost as cigarette smoke flogging over an enamored classroom until I leave – only glancing back when the clipboard is returned.
We both knew it would be empty.
We both admitted it when we smelt the smoke.
The sinking ship already burned, and your dying wave is the confusion behind betrayal of a tradition to quench approaching starvation.
That final bite – the moment we are full – is where all history is lost. In the future, they will wonder where the ***** came from. But I won’t wonder about you.
You are not an exclamation mark. You were a question mark all along. But a mark, nonetheless.

November 22/1963,
the day remembered in infamy,
a great man vanished,
Camelot was banished.

He rode in a deathly motorcade,
one where history was made.
Cheers deafened the mass,
he was shot by an outcast.

His smile charmed his people,
nobody was his equal.
His slick hair swayed in the Texas air,
he would soon have a new heir.

His convertible top was down,
his waves controlled the town.
His presence was tremendous,
the shot was stupendous.

CRACK, CRACK, CRACK,
two shots made contact,
his head burst in two,
the question was, who?

Head in lap, Jackie cried,
her eyes wet like low tide.
Men in black rushed to the car,
the shooter now afar.

Rushed to the hospital in haste,
the air possessed a bad taste.
The news was all about,
his life very much in doubt.

Hours passed with slow pace,
peoples tears burned like mace.
A country was without a head,
LBJ is the man they said.

Finally the time had come,
the news startling none,
JFK is dead! JFK is dead!
The people mourned in dread.

The age of youth was out,
times of havoc were about,
JFK is dead! JFK is dead!
The country is still in dread.

We are the forgotten ones
The ones who can articulate
beyond the guns and knifes.
We don't need a beat
Our word flow through emotionally.
We are here to capture and decipher minds
Teach them all those things school has left behind
How history is only written by the victor
How there's more to blacks than Rosa Parks, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr's his..tory.
Let's not leave out the truth.
Poets stand up, fight for the youth.
We share our truth about love
Let's share the truth about knowledge
Forget the cliches of if life gives you lemons make lemonade.
We freed ourselves from the British.
Then enslaved Africa and made them forget who they were.
Only of Britain would had thought of that first.
Let's not sugar coat the past
Let's control the present and the future.
Poets stand up
We are the symphonies of hip hop, rap and r&b;
We are the class.
We are the Billy Holliday and Marvin Gay of this new era.
Like the fitted cap we fit snugg.
Poets stand up.
**** speaking on unicorns and rainbows
The sunny side of the chi.
Just last night my Lil man's got shot by the cops.
I use to say he was my son
Now I plan his funeral with his mom.
Poets stand up
Bloods, crips, gangsters, thugs re unite as the black panthers.
Poets stand up!
Poets stand up!
As they say ok ok your 15 seconds of fame Is up. No more from you today Mr. Ananymous.

I miss you,
Clear cut,
Crystal globe,
When the stories of the past,
Hung more or less straightly,
Like the ribben suspending you

"I thought we were good people, Mama"
"It was the books you read,
Not the words I said,
my child.
I didn't spare your ears,
and when you threatened tears,
I let the truth march on"
"Then how did I grow being proud,
singing our national anthems loud,
sure it was good to be American?
My country has stolen, my country has *****, made every poisened mistake,
and it WON'T STOP!"
" That is true,
my child, but it is good to be you.
Apologize for your cousins and fathers and aunts, if you must,
and your purchased slave chocolate,
slave t-shirts, and jewelry
But NEVER,
my child,
not EVER,
should you apologize for being yourself"