An Anecdotal Argument for 1:1 Student/Faculty Ratios

Another girl learns

To turn

Her hair before a phrase.

Someone closes his mouth,

Turns his eyes to the south,

So he can get a raise.

Someone leads a boy to think

That prowess, courage, strength

Are for the body only.

It's amazing how rapid

Life can teach girls to be vapid

Or otherwise be lonely.

The worldwide water cooler

Makes it so easy to slip

Into celebrity gossip,

and another mind

Dies on the vine.

Let's get there faster next time.

Rectangular Humanism

My brain is inalienable,

Impregnable to invasion from outer space.

I was seven years learning right from left;

I'll be seven learning right from wrong.

These truths I hold to be self-evident:

That all men were created separate,

and were endowed by their creator

With somewhat more than the other great apes

In certain various dimensions.

I suppose that makes me the humanest.

Self-Portrait By an Artist Running Out of Paint, Pt. 2

We are only ourselves in our reactions,

Those small, unscheduled intermissions

In this practiced, improvised performance,

and I, by reading and reading and reading,

In my quotidian quest to learn everything

Am finding that all this reading and knowing

Have half-begun to compromise

My potential for surprise.

The mirror's averted from my eyes.

I see the painted back instead.

How long 'til I'm a stranger in my head,

In my own house?

Self-Portrait By an Artist Running Out of Paint, Pt. 1

I am not an art …

I teach an art as aerobic …

It is the only way to do so …

It is so much work to do so …

Like one who sets a food budget that leaves her …

I find I have never been so tired for so …

I find I have never been so tired of …

I find it useless to wonder if I could be an …

As useless as wondering if I ever was an art …

I am as much one as the other …

They All Look the Same

Whether bulls and crescent stars, or lame old donkeys and elephants

Surrounded by a sucking cyclone of superfluous sycophants

Speaking for a cabal of corrupt and crass and callous cads

By violating viewers' vision with a myriad of dreary ads,

They all trade on our worst fears so, we'll trade in our freedom.

I really hate election years, although I guess I know we need 'em.

Check Your Six

I promise I won't let the trash sit for days.

I promise I won't smoke 'til our house sits in haze.

I promise I won't ever say you look fat.

I promise I won't trash your friends or your cat.

I promise I won't just watch baseball all day.

I promise I'll go look for work right away.

I promise I won't blow you off all the time.

I promise I won't put our business online.

I promise I won't be charmed away by another.

I promise I won't come between you and your mother.

I promise that soon, I'll come to the point of this rhyme:

I promise this won't be like last time.

Consciously Irrational

The facts are in, though they've never been out.

The facts that came in can suit only doubt.

The fact that you're still green, and I am nearly ripe,

The fact that you aren't, and won't be, and couldn't be my type,

The fact that I'm a swelling oval, and you're parallel lines,

They give me little pause, just enough to say “it's fine.”

The fact that I can't bear what you believe,

The fact that you'd prefer I leave,

The fact that you're a completely different breed,

They cool my mind, but not my need.