To the World

I've seen scars raised by landmass-boxing.

I've sped down them, too–on skis.

I've seen a real-life Mordor

By the bluest of the seas.

I've seen pie-sized green eyes

Framed by rare red hair in curls,

and speaking in mathematical terms,

I've not even been to the world,

Nor know I my entire mind,

Although I know I wanna.

I've been as far as shelf's edge,

Not to deepest Mariana.

There are seven billion minds like mine,

Worlds of lightning and ridges and rifts.

In philosophical terms, no one's ever been bored,

Just too lazy to google-drift.

To Belong or Not to Belong

I belong here.
I can produce the paper to prove it.
I can produce paper like a preposterously paranoid printer,
Hyperaware of its own impending obsolescence.
I have always been able to.  That's why I belong here.
That's why I am here.

I do not belong here.
I can present the posture to prove it.
I have no equipment.  I have no experience.  I have no authority.
I don't even have a role.  I don't even have a seat.
I don't even know why I'm here.

Study Hall

I sit in an uncomfortable silence, watched but unsupervised.
The unwelcome symphony of my every movement
Stiffens my worn, arthritic ears.  I yearn to stretch them.

I sit in a painful silence, supervising a room full of trained humans
Who have been told that their thoughts are irrelevant,
That the expression thereof is unwelcome.

The silence can make a silence uncomfortable.
Only the explanation can make a silence painful.

Intrusion will make that silence unbearable.

The Battle Hymn of the Unadaptable English Teacher

A day may come when the traditional curriculum fails,
When we assign contemporary texts
and let students choose their assessments,
But it is not this day.

An hour of rigor and relevance,
When the cultural canon comes crashing down,
But it is not this day.

This day we write!

By all that you hold dear, I bid you,
Sit down in rows.

No, Galileo!

I used to think you circled me
In deep orbit.
I used to think there was something
That held you to me.
I was looking too hard for you
To see.

I am no Galileo.
You are the attractive one.
I am the attracted one,
and I should have known.

I am spinning in circles.

She Is Like Water

She is like water –
Seventy percent of my world.

She is like water –
Almost unbelievably common.

She is like water –
She washes the day's grime away.

She is like water –
Almost unbelievably awesome.

She is like water –
Perfect, by nature or design.
She is part of me –
Temporarily mine.

Anecdotal Proof of Chemical Imbalance in the Human Brain

Today, I did things I should
Things I wanted
and thinks I should want.
I read, wrote and studied.
I listened to good music
and used the one-track repeat
For one charitably called lousy,
The kind that gets me excited
Though I only sort of like it,
and then I ran around like
A low, wide, wild man-island
Pushing up with only the sea around me.
Then I joked and I talked,
and for the first time in a long one, I listened,
The first time this week I was present and not missing.


It's hard to believe I was depressed when I woke up this morning.