I let the under cooked carrot cubes play with ginger hues and pork broth in my mouth. Their dull edges slightly carved my tongue but the soup did pass like ocean waves to the seashore. It left me essentially wanting more. Down my esophagus it goes as I cramp down the vitamin C, B12(?) and a sorry excuse to a quick fix dinner. It was good all the same. It was those spring onion stems that bonded together next to the pork. Crunches of fresh grass and a morning Sun.
My laptop holds the key to what could possibly be my ticket to the bed in no where near the intention...the drive to dream. My mind is too tired to think of good planets...of worlds that are created for my craving to rest on clouds or probably fat people that can run for miles against the fit. But my head is still on the screen...Typing and wishing words were closer to my "academic thoughts".

How the hell am I supposed to know
who I am?
We sit in rows.
I feel my creativity,
running away from the ideas I'm
supposed to have.
Why are people so persistent
about telling me what I'm supposed
to say;
and what I'm not.
The more I 'learn'
the less I know
about who I really am

Exemplify without try
Each teacher bears the
Burden of account,
But the only way
They carry it is with
The strength of humility
--The emptiness to learn,
The fullness to teach--
And they do it without speaking,
Flowing like a river
Through a fountain
--Ever depleting,
Ever replenishing--

Oh how happy you make me!
and how sad I feel every time we have to part.
You're warmth and comfort is like no other.
Nothing makes me feel more relaxed than you.
Nothing takes away my stress like you do.
When I want to surrender,
I simply think of you...
As My Reward,
My Gift,
My SERENITY to this life filled with UPS and downs.
But when I'm with you I feel equal.
There is no UP or down.
With you, I have the wildest/happiest/saddest/ most romantic and most terrifying of dreams.
You make me feel everything.
You completely swallow me up and take me in like no other.
Oh how happy you make me!
and how sad, every morning we have to part!
But one thing's for sure,
You will always be waiting for me to come back after a long day.
I LOVE my bed!

I get up. I stretch out.
I make tea. I head down.
Shower. ***. Shower ***.
Get dressed.
Man hits the brakes too soon.
I'm eating yoghurt with a spoon.
Who let this old woman
Leave her garden?

I never miss this anguish
When it's not here.

I need to let go
I need to let him mess up
And do things alone
Even if he fails, badly,
He won't learn with me watching.

The day they told me you had resigned,
I went searching for you.
My eyes sharpened to find you
like two new Ticonderoga pencils
on this timed, standardized test of life.
I, your pupil,
felt desperate to fill in the bubbles
on this journey
to fill up my heart again
with answers to questions
I knew only you could
score & tell me were right.
But you never had exams in your courses
I should've known when you left,
that was your way,
your blessing
to write my dissertation
and live my philosophy out, for you,
You had given me love,
you had always seen what I couldn't;
my potential. Who I am, truly.
And that's why, from you,
I learned everything & could feel internal peace
for I learned my purpose
& in my search for you again,
great teacher,
I realized you had never left
and the test had never existed.
I will still always wonder though
where you went.

(c) 2014

Zoe hangs back,

My home-time mayhem
with half a head of hair,
pink neon flashing up her cherry studded arms.

My cufflinks snag and shake,
trying to make her see,
trying to make her see something.

the skilled craftsman
he labors pen on page in nights silence
the names and faces of his students
vividly painted to him in small ways on each page

the girl with her flourish of drawings
in the margins of her work
a bird delicately drawn to appear to be dropping
the words onto the page
in amongst her arguments that shakespeare was a charlatan...
the young man from the morning bell
who dose not write as much as he carves and hacks
his words into the dull instrument of the page
crafting it in his way to resemble the angry face he wears within

this quiet man
teacher
he learns too
from the patchwork quilt of humanity
that passes year by year through his world
some shine brightly
others faded away into obscurity's cage
see him sitting in nights silence
pen in hand
a master craftsman at his labor of love