My boy told me the other day
That he didn’t have a mother
He only had a babysitter

I say my boy--
The boy at my daycare
The boy with seven siblings
Ripped from five of them
Gained another in the process
Losing mothers like pencils

The mother he has now is a teacher,
No summer job,
But four foster kids to her name
Her summers are free
Her pockets are full
But my boys

They’re still in daycare
Six to six
Or longer
They come with bagged eyes
one in pull ups at the age of five
My boys

Their sister's in the other room
Their mother sits at home
Alone
Doing nothing
Probably drinking
Or anything but mothering

Right now
She’s out of town
There’s a babysitter at home
She picks them up late and drops them off early
They're cranky
And tired
They're getting six hours of sleep
Plus one at naptime

My boys never sleep at nap time
None of them but Isaiah
Isaiah
He loves to talk about his home
Not where they sleep at night
But at home
In Africa
He’ll tell you if you ask
It’s beautiful to hear
The joy filling his face is fixating

But then you see his legs
How they wobble in at the knees
When you see how he sleeps
He rocks himself the whole time
Rocking even through his dreams
It’s all from the orphanage.
The workers couldn’t help him to sleep.
He just turned five.
He starts kindergarten soon,
And he just learned how to spell his name
Everyone else here can read all the names
His and theirs
My boys

I love them with everything I have
And they know that,
But I leave soon.
In a few weeks we all go to school
I’ve been doing this for years, but them,
They haven’t
It’s their first
And I’ll pray
But I hate that all I can do is pray
They deserve more than that.
They deserve attention and love
They deserve hope and security
I can only hope that the next teacher will give that to them
To my boys
To my wonderful boys...

Kathy Ann cut the hair of Mr. Diatribe,
recently deceased,
and glued his soft golden locks
to her pink phone case.
Fuzzy, calming, cathartic.

The scholars took this as evidence that she truly loved him
for all the favoritism
for all the joking
for all the flirting
for all the gentle touches
and for all the extra credit he offered her.

She raised her phone to the sky and declared
“This is my trauma on display,
for all the world to see.
It changed my life forever.
He will never part with me.”

Sophia asked her
“Wouldn’t you rather move on
and build a better society?
Imagine a school with free lunches,
no homework, no grades, bully-free.
Co-operation and learning only.”

“I’m still ****** up about it,” said Kathy Ann.
“It sounds good but I don’t believe.”

“That’s okay. I love you.”

“Some day, I will too. Thank you.”

Please stop calling me nice.
I am not nice.
I will not be contained to a single word,
When my bones are built from metaphors
And my lips leak similes.
I am a fireball of emotion, splitting trees and men in two with my passion for my art.
I am a slurry of terror, creeping up on you at night that curls your toes right before you fall asleep.
I am not nice, I am anything but
I am alive with the summer heat that burns in my eyes and the sunlight that flows through my ribcage.
I am a warrior, a fighter, a solider in disguise.
I am the moon that hides it face in the day, only to showcase it's purity in the night.
I am the stiff wind that knocks the shallow air out of your lungs on a cold, January morning.
I am the tick, tick, tick of the buzzer right before its majestic song.
I am the obscene, the extraordinary, the menacing things in life.
I am not confined by a single word.
I
am
not
nice.

I cry while I remember the look you gave when I got it wrong
Again
Now you've ripped my comfort way from me
The one who didn't look down on me
The one who got me to understand

You're surprised at the effect?
No you are not
You knew
but
You didn't care

So be it
Guess I'll cry every time I don't understand
Everyday

Isolation

I'm a Rock and Rock teacher and I'm really dead cool,
I wear a leather jacket as I'm swaggering to school,
I like what I teach and I teach what I like,
A roar across the playground on my motorbike.
I let the kids call me by my first name,
My mum called me Gertrude (which is a bit of a shame),
I love Sid Vicious so I call myself Nance,
And put safety pins in my PVC pants.
I talk about Shakespeare or as I call him Bill,
I put wicked street art on my windowsill,
I follow no rules, I do what I choose,
I pierced my lip, I've got tattoos,
I'm fighting the system, I'm hip and I'm rad.
It's a midlife crisis and it's really quite sad.

Hello mother, hello father
I’m doing fine
No I ain’t I cried again today

Hello teacher, little preacher
Why are you screaming
Cos your shouts make me want to
Shout out loud myself

Hello sister, little mistress
It’s ok I’m fine
Just had another bad day
Which I can’t get out my mind

Hello brother, from another
I had a horrible day
Just leave me to be locked away
Far from my reality

I.

“You can only fight the way you practice”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

His lessons started late
As always, and as always
What is thrown is a question
You grip tightly
around your fingers
as one would,
as one always should.

With a branch he beckons:
“Come” he asks,

“if a stick is struck from this angle,
what would your answer be?”

Always, the old man taught
With each strike, each parry,
Each disarm and lock,
Each time my knuckles
Would hurt. This way
he makes it sure
that my body
remembers.

This is always
the first step.
My mind might forget.
But the body
Remembers.


II.

“It is difficult to realize the true Way just through sword-fencing. Know the smallest things and the biggest things, the shallowest things and the deepest things.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings: Miyamoto Musashi

With him, everything starts
The vague quality of nonwords
Taught from pain, simplified
Through science:

the fulcrum and the lever.

Each joint, each turn,
a pattern to comprehend,
all things work in context:

A framework of the undeniable
Fact:

the world is separate
In only these two words:

Taub at Tihaya

The colloquial words for
Face down and face up;
This is a pattern
of the body.

III.

“If you wish to control others you must first control yourself”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

Tihaya

The lesson starts
When he presses
His thumb forward
to a hand asking for alms
like turning a doorknob
too far to the right.

Taub

when I pull back
four fingers
on a giving hand
too far to what is left.

these are the means
for control.
When I know
How much is necessary
To push or to pull,
To teach or to break.

- 18 October 2017

I'm like a teachers pet except what I  learn I regret
Eager to be the best but stressed when it comes to the test
I'd rather lay down mindful practicing in my head
Then to lay down mindless depressed as s__t in my bed