deaf eyes, blind ears, pens down!

two of my English Teachers,
from high school and college
from way way back when,
i requested, critiqued my poems,
cause they could, ex-teachers...

They said:
Your emails are too short,
your poems are too long,
we recommend that your
quit this, do what we say:

pens down!

Your poems are travelogues
to places in your mind, we’ve
got no interest in visiting, Egypt
and Exile, cemeteries in a privy,
time to get a new travel agency.

Your imagery, ars obscura to us,
everyone but you, despite too many
copious notes, which proves our point,
you need smile more and write less.

Just because you’ve got creases,
lines all across your face, doesn’t
mean any wisdom came with them,
nor did you listen in our classes,
we suggest, resolutely, give it a rest.

I am a writer and I've always known it.
Even when my feeble self-esteem conspired against my urge to pick up a pen.
I carried it around
like you carry relics
my pens.
Remained tethered to them.
I write now.
Perhaps because I am not a talker.

There's dirt under my fingernails
There's pen marks on my hand
I don't know how they got there
I just don't understand
I'm curled up in a corner
My stomach is tied in knots
There's something crawling in my throat
I can't connect the dots
I've lost the feeling in my arm
From clutching it to my head
Crying up the distance
That they should have made instead
Faintly in the backdrop
They simmer in something mean
I wash my hand with soapy water
But the marks can still be seen
All I hear are glasses
They smash towords the floor
All I smell is putrid gas
From the night out just before
I'm getting kind of sleepy
And we're past the midnight mark
But it's difficult to dream
When the dreams you made are dark
But nontheless I'm sleeping
I move but make no sound
And I wake up in the morning
There's empty bottles all around
I don't know what happened to you
Because the laughter falls like sand
But there's dirt under my fingernails
And pen marks on my hands.

- Anisah Mariah

The pens I went
to bed with left
streaks of ink
on my sheets and
pillowcases. We
soiled these
sheets with
unleashed intimacy,
with authenticity,
with validation,
with imagination
and creativity.

And when we
finished, when we
had jotted thoughts
as clear as we
could, we drifted
off to sleep. When
I woke from my
dreams, I would look
at the product of
this conception,
full of pride.

Then I’d look down
and see the blots
across my body,
my bed, my sheets,
and chuckle at the
mess it takes to
create these darlings.


-
by Aleksander Mielnikow
(Alek the Poet)

In the weirdest turn of events that day
As a cop toting guns and pepper spray
I gathered an urge to pen my first ode
In my lunch hour, before hitting the road

To sirens and light of my precinct's space
not a stanza wrote, yet my mind's apace
the pen's the problem; confidence recede
Pondered a visit to a friend, indeed

Thoughtful I'm moving, this old clue I'd act
on Brooklyn's pen thief; kleptomaniac
acquired from him, an ink dipping quill
of Huia birds, still boxed with its bill

Case solved; on the back of the bill it hints
"Dear Mayor, pen's for poems; lead's for thugs."

Fervent warriors come upon a field,
A trickle of men storming the grassy abyss,
prepared with shields upon their hearts
and weapons ready at the finger tips.
Their hearts oscillating to the war cries
and to the sounding drummer's march.
A prevalent threat casting shadows overhead;
Awaiting the freedom bell and the open air,
the men charge with their pens cocked
and their ink basins filled to the brim.