Showing posts with label why?. Show all posts
Showing posts with label why?. Show all posts
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Pink Aquarium, Rain, Love
The aquarium I keep for my 1st graders is pink.
It kind of matters to them with frogs, fish
hey, it's cool.
We have a plecostomus that has grown four inches
He's so big.
Over the winter break someone turned off the power
for two days to the filters, so that they burned out in coming back on,
This is exciting to explain but you have to feed water
Into them starting them up.
They were probably doing some electric check in my room on the
Computers that don't work and so now the few fish left alive are dying.
Or maybe someone just decided to kill my tank.
Try thinking about that the night before school starts.
I'm a teacher, not a savior and so they are just dead.
It's raining outside and it's late and I'm sitting here
Covered with fish water, as I bleakly in vain tried changing the water.
So it's not working.
I'm listening to the rain...drip. Pouring now.
I have no meter.
I'm out of rhyme.
My smile is not good.
And I'm in love with a mime.
Actually I'm in love with a shadow.
Who would probably find this humorous if only for the
Fish germs that I splashed all over myself
And I used words not allowed in school finding this
Wreck of the 1st grade hindenberger.
And then topping that off I'm watching them die.
Were you ever in love with someone?
Someone that was "unattainable" ? And perhaps
A bit of the problem was also that it reminded you of all the other screw up
things in your rather impressive list of screw ups in your life?
Rain reminds me of a funny story. Not about fish.
I used to walk in my hometown. Long
Impressive distances. Like 15 miles to the mall. I had no car
And maybe I walked out of need to move.
I walked to the mall at least 15 miles away but it began to pour and I missed the last bus.
I had no money but the drivers knew me, just missed it.
So I walked. Had to cut over a huge hill and through an area of fields.
In West Virginia, Morgantown, think
Major fields.
I got in thick mud. Which was hard. I was littler then.
My foot went in and the mud took my shoe. It sucked my shoe away. No fishing it out.
So I walked with a bare foot through the rain another, umm ten miles home.
No one noticed at home. It was about 45 degrees. I got sick later from it.
That feeling is how I feel about telling the kids about this tank.
And how it feels this happened.
And how it feels, my love , to know
You are there but I can never know where.
It's raining and I'm headed out.
It kind of matters to them with frogs, fish
hey, it's cool.
We have a plecostomus that has grown four inches
He's so big.
Over the winter break someone turned off the power
for two days to the filters, so that they burned out in coming back on,
This is exciting to explain but you have to feed water
Into them starting them up.
They were probably doing some electric check in my room on the
Computers that don't work and so now the few fish left alive are dying.
Or maybe someone just decided to kill my tank.
Try thinking about that the night before school starts.
I'm a teacher, not a savior and so they are just dead.
It's raining outside and it's late and I'm sitting here
Covered with fish water, as I bleakly in vain tried changing the water.
So it's not working.
I'm listening to the rain...drip. Pouring now.
I have no meter.
I'm out of rhyme.
My smile is not good.
And I'm in love with a mime.
Actually I'm in love with a shadow.
Who would probably find this humorous if only for the
Fish germs that I splashed all over myself
And I used words not allowed in school finding this
Wreck of the 1st grade hindenberger.
And then topping that off I'm watching them die.
Were you ever in love with someone?
Someone that was "unattainable" ? And perhaps
A bit of the problem was also that it reminded you of all the other screw up
things in your rather impressive list of screw ups in your life?
Rain reminds me of a funny story. Not about fish.
I used to walk in my hometown. Long
Impressive distances. Like 15 miles to the mall. I had no car
And maybe I walked out of need to move.
I walked to the mall at least 15 miles away but it began to pour and I missed the last bus.
I had no money but the drivers knew me, just missed it.
So I walked. Had to cut over a huge hill and through an area of fields.
In West Virginia, Morgantown, think
Major fields.
I got in thick mud. Which was hard. I was littler then.
My foot went in and the mud took my shoe. It sucked my shoe away. No fishing it out.
So I walked with a bare foot through the rain another, umm ten miles home.
No one noticed at home. It was about 45 degrees. I got sick later from it.
That feeling is how I feel about telling the kids about this tank.
And how it feels this happened.
And how it feels, my love , to know
You are there but I can never know where.
It's raining and I'm headed out.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Dreams
Of Sylvia
My daughter was in my dreams two night past
At college now, there are days I grieve my loneliness.
And think how foolish, stop this.
My life was built around her tiny hand in mine.
You would think each night dream would be of her
But, no, just there two nights ago, after three months away.
And I felt anxious. Suffocating and woke gasping.
Images of not really having made her ready enough to meet the dangers
In life, these were in my flashes of insight.
I put on my little lamp and looked out into my room.
Alone with these fears. That my daughter was not safe.
In the morning I couldn't reach her by phone.
It's mildly ironic as this was the recurrent nightmare I've had for
Twenty some years about her father, and in many ways she is his image.
She is very hard to catch, well, like a moonbeam. Cliche but so.
She left me an email this morning, a cry in her dark.
Her friend at school bled to death internally in the night,
Some horrific collapse at their school that no one could understand
And I thought of the dream, and how hard it is
For me to protect her from this awful pain.
Little one she was so hurt when characters in her books suffered.
I tried to pluck those books away from her
Stone fox still hangs in the air as a story that she felt so deeply.
In my daughter my capacity for empathy and pain, joy and dreaming found companion
She has gone to her school that is popped from Potter's
And death struck like a viper but I cannot
Pull this volume away, she's read it now
I can't take this kind of knowing from her or shield it.
On the phone this tiny distracted frightened voice said
Bravely , "He was so kind and loved by everyone,
there was no one that did not speak so well of him, mummy."
And you want to encapsulate this in some grand wisdom, design,
Some truth and all I could say was I had no reasons.
The first time I ever saw her bleed she cut herself on a metal train toy
That I threw away brashly and instinctively called it "Bad."
To distract her. And it got to me. I've seen this so much
With three children and teaching but that tiny cut on her finger got to me.
Syl was so shocked and looked at it in horror.
This thing hurt me, how could this happen?
This thing, this nightmare hurts her, how can such a thing happen?
How can such a good child go away like this?
My daughter was in my dreams two night past
At college now, there are days I grieve my loneliness.
And think how foolish, stop this.
My life was built around her tiny hand in mine.
You would think each night dream would be of her
But, no, just there two nights ago, after three months away.
And I felt anxious. Suffocating and woke gasping.
Images of not really having made her ready enough to meet the dangers
In life, these were in my flashes of insight.
I put on my little lamp and looked out into my room.
Alone with these fears. That my daughter was not safe.
In the morning I couldn't reach her by phone.
It's mildly ironic as this was the recurrent nightmare I've had for
Twenty some years about her father, and in many ways she is his image.
She is very hard to catch, well, like a moonbeam. Cliche but so.
She left me an email this morning, a cry in her dark.
Her friend at school bled to death internally in the night,
Some horrific collapse at their school that no one could understand
And I thought of the dream, and how hard it is
For me to protect her from this awful pain.
Little one she was so hurt when characters in her books suffered.
I tried to pluck those books away from her
Stone fox still hangs in the air as a story that she felt so deeply.
In my daughter my capacity for empathy and pain, joy and dreaming found companion
She has gone to her school that is popped from Potter's
And death struck like a viper but I cannot
Pull this volume away, she's read it now
I can't take this kind of knowing from her or shield it.
On the phone this tiny distracted frightened voice said
Bravely , "He was so kind and loved by everyone,
there was no one that did not speak so well of him, mummy."
And you want to encapsulate this in some grand wisdom, design,
Some truth and all I could say was I had no reasons.
The first time I ever saw her bleed she cut herself on a metal train toy
That I threw away brashly and instinctively called it "Bad."
To distract her. And it got to me. I've seen this so much
With three children and teaching but that tiny cut on her finger got to me.
Syl was so shocked and looked at it in horror.
This thing hurt me, how could this happen?
This thing, this nightmare hurts her, how can such a thing happen?
How can such a good child go away like this?
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Rescue Fantasy Meets Life
I have a rescue fantasy that came in a dream last night again.
I'll wake up one day in a stadium of golf, football and baseball
All sports are there and being played, (with this fantastic kids sports set up too.
It has this kid elevator to the activities for them on the various complex "floors")
Seated in one event I'm basically watching nothing, which isn't interesting me,
I look over from my seat
and see next door the old abandoned Victorian on the street that runs by this place.
The house sits stuffed by a parking garage awaiting demolition, which is so sad.
There by the stadium complex, it is completely on fire,
Mostly I see the roof, the blaze breaking through it as it reaches through to the roof.
I try to tell everyone at this sporting event that the fire is a real danger.
It is real and certainly spreading, but they don't care.
Because the sports games are now turned into somehow wrestling on a track
and they get to join in, it somehow gets interactive.
They are doing this 'review of the rules' for the wrestle fest now
As I, outside the male group, try to pull away someone to listen to fire information,
And very excited men and boys are listening intently to that rule thing
and start to wrestle in huge packs.
It is a male wrestling twisted knot of behinds sticking out.
I have to give up with my pleading to be heard.
I'm talking to their behinds to try and tell them the sky is blackened from this fire.
The cloud of smoke covers the sun.
So I call the 911 operator trying to get the fire attended,
The operator asks a lot
Of questions and tells me it's "contained" finally.
The fire I see blazing.
This cloud taking the sun away from it roiling out thick and thicker, a life ending fire.
So I go across the street to the parking garage to check things out
The fire is beside the place we parked a car.
I'm also unclear on who "we" are.
I can't remember what the car looked like really either, but want to go get it anyway.
You are not supposed to go near the place, it's taped off.
I ride on the kid elevator to get there
So I bend over like Alice and have to hold my finger down on a kid button
You have to push it a lot. In my dream I think GOOD IDEA, patent that.
(It's for kids so they like to push in the button to make it go.)
They ride this to the golfing floor
Or the soccer floor or to different places they can play sports.
One side faces a terrarium that is behind a wall of glass in the elevator.
Then on the street outside I get out
which is a completely different and a city reality
As if I did leave that sporting complex
The fire is spreading everywhere and we are calling the place San Fran.
I hear the firemen talking about how it is now "underground" and threatening three
Structures.
I see it flaming so out of control so I kind of steal my car as a get-a-way and go back on the
Kid elevator to get the people I need to get to go, who keep saying,
"What did they tell you on the phone." As if my own two eyes
Meant nothing which cycles several times.
That part the most "real."
What I saw and know is meaningless here.
Then I get involved in something where I am diverted to an outside cafe that my
Mom is running that doesn't really sell food but she seems to be considering it as she has
"customers". And into some nonsense on one of the levels of the complex
Where someone isn't really helping someone else who is dying
And not comforting them, but instead buying them a candle
Which I smash for it's wrongness and they keep giving cards and there is a judge now
Who seems to be my husband, and then isn't, that says the dying person just needed
To be talked to through the end.
At that point in an inside mall Drugstore and finally outside somehow, looking at the worst fire one could ever see that will take out this world.
In a beautiful Victorian ablaze and watching it spread to buildings and thinking
That I can't get the people I care about into the car to save because
I can't see them, find them,
Convince them, show them and so I'll either have to
Escape by driving this car away by myself or go back in and suffer this confusion.
And just be like they are, blinded by this fun going on and this sleek place.
Unconvinced anything might be able to take us out and that we might be in danger.
I know now, know for certain had I been able to be heard
Be able to be heard, we early on could have gotten out or saved ourselves.
I've always known that.
And so I go in the kids elevator and play a long time on my way back because
Being free by myself would hurt too much knowing all of this blind stupidity
And then I woke up.
Hurting, head pain, disoriented with an image of a sky thick with smoke
And an eerie sun and that house burning that had
Lit on fire the foundations of a city.
I'll wake up one day in a stadium of golf, football and baseball
All sports are there and being played, (with this fantastic kids sports set up too.
It has this kid elevator to the activities for them on the various complex "floors")
Seated in one event I'm basically watching nothing, which isn't interesting me,
I look over from my seat
and see next door the old abandoned Victorian on the street that runs by this place.
The house sits stuffed by a parking garage awaiting demolition, which is so sad.
There by the stadium complex, it is completely on fire,
Mostly I see the roof, the blaze breaking through it as it reaches through to the roof.
I try to tell everyone at this sporting event that the fire is a real danger.
It is real and certainly spreading, but they don't care.
Because the sports games are now turned into somehow wrestling on a track
and they get to join in, it somehow gets interactive.
They are doing this 'review of the rules' for the wrestle fest now
As I, outside the male group, try to pull away someone to listen to fire information,
And very excited men and boys are listening intently to that rule thing
and start to wrestle in huge packs.
It is a male wrestling twisted knot of behinds sticking out.
I have to give up with my pleading to be heard.
I'm talking to their behinds to try and tell them the sky is blackened from this fire.
The cloud of smoke covers the sun.
So I call the 911 operator trying to get the fire attended,
The operator asks a lot
Of questions and tells me it's "contained" finally.
The fire I see blazing.
This cloud taking the sun away from it roiling out thick and thicker, a life ending fire.
So I go across the street to the parking garage to check things out
The fire is beside the place we parked a car.
I'm also unclear on who "we" are.
I can't remember what the car looked like really either, but want to go get it anyway.
You are not supposed to go near the place, it's taped off.
I ride on the kid elevator to get there
So I bend over like Alice and have to hold my finger down on a kid button
You have to push it a lot. In my dream I think GOOD IDEA, patent that.
(It's for kids so they like to push in the button to make it go.)
They ride this to the golfing floor
Or the soccer floor or to different places they can play sports.
One side faces a terrarium that is behind a wall of glass in the elevator.
Then on the street outside I get out
which is a completely different and a city reality
As if I did leave that sporting complex
The fire is spreading everywhere and we are calling the place San Fran.
I hear the firemen talking about how it is now "underground" and threatening three
Structures.
I see it flaming so out of control so I kind of steal my car as a get-a-way and go back on the
Kid elevator to get the people I need to get to go, who keep saying,
"What did they tell you on the phone." As if my own two eyes
Meant nothing which cycles several times.
That part the most "real."
What I saw and know is meaningless here.
Then I get involved in something where I am diverted to an outside cafe that my
Mom is running that doesn't really sell food but she seems to be considering it as she has
"customers". And into some nonsense on one of the levels of the complex
Where someone isn't really helping someone else who is dying
And not comforting them, but instead buying them a candle
Which I smash for it's wrongness and they keep giving cards and there is a judge now
Who seems to be my husband, and then isn't, that says the dying person just needed
To be talked to through the end.
At that point in an inside mall Drugstore and finally outside somehow, looking at the worst fire one could ever see that will take out this world.
In a beautiful Victorian ablaze and watching it spread to buildings and thinking
That I can't get the people I care about into the car to save because
I can't see them, find them,
Convince them, show them and so I'll either have to
Escape by driving this car away by myself or go back in and suffer this confusion.
And just be like they are, blinded by this fun going on and this sleek place.
Unconvinced anything might be able to take us out and that we might be in danger.
I know now, know for certain had I been able to be heard
Be able to be heard, we early on could have gotten out or saved ourselves.
I've always known that.
And so I go in the kids elevator and play a long time on my way back because
Being free by myself would hurt too much knowing all of this blind stupidity
And then I woke up.
Hurting, head pain, disoriented with an image of a sky thick with smoke
And an eerie sun and that house burning that had
Lit on fire the foundations of a city.
Friday, September 7, 2007
A Day In the Life of a Shetland Pony
(title from a very amused daughter in response to "give me a title for a poem")
"Lord Whetland" was considering the deeply important
Was the King of France still bald and how would one know for certainty?
(the reflection commonly considered glowing from his piebald dome a favored sign),
And where to find the absolute proof, ah his depth of "mind",
When Penelope demanded his immediate attention,
"The Shetland pony is not in the stable
Nor has anyone responded to my summons to find him."
"Good God, " he responded aghast and followed this with,
"I promise you that this will be dealt with."
This from a man with no dangling participles,
Ringing for Dabney, Cook appeared with the most egregious of expression.
"Sir, it would be most opportune if you could lift yourself up and
Outside as the Shetland and Dabney are embroiled once again
In the rhododendron hedges debating as we speak.
"This distresses me at a time the truth of the hair sprouting reached critical mass."
Gazing, he girded himself for distraction and resolved, his way now clear.
"You say," he gasped moving as ever quickly to the call,
King contemplation left neither here nor there.
Penelope was following wondering aloud if they needed Laddie D after all,
His noxious odor so off putting, and the tendency to droop.
...........................................and at that point several dozen children slipped off firmly to sleep.
(One really must recall when reading such stuff in the evening to
Prop open the adult eyelids with a couple of toothpicks if consciousness is desired.
The story today reading aloud was " Life as a Shetland Pony"
We were entertaining Chapter Seven
"A Day in The Life of a Very Brazen Shetland Pony and a Logical Scientist"
Was the King of France still bald and how would one know for certainty?
(the reflection commonly considered glowing from his piebald dome a favored sign),
And where to find the absolute proof, ah his depth of "mind",
When Penelope demanded his immediate attention,
"The Shetland pony is not in the stable
Nor has anyone responded to my summons to find him."
"Good God, " he responded aghast and followed this with,
"I promise you that this will be dealt with."
This from a man with no dangling participles,
Ringing for Dabney, Cook appeared with the most egregious of expression.
"Sir, it would be most opportune if you could lift yourself up and
Outside as the Shetland and Dabney are embroiled once again
In the rhododendron hedges debating as we speak.
"This distresses me at a time the truth of the hair sprouting reached critical mass."
Gazing, he girded himself for distraction and resolved, his way now clear.
"You say," he gasped moving as ever quickly to the call,
King contemplation left neither here nor there.
Penelope was following wondering aloud if they needed Laddie D after all,
His noxious odor so off putting, and the tendency to droop.
...........................................and at that point several dozen children slipped off firmly to sleep.
(One really must recall when reading such stuff in the evening to
Prop open the adult eyelids with a couple of toothpicks if consciousness is desired.
The story today reading aloud was " Life as a Shetland Pony"
We were entertaining Chapter Seven
"A Day in The Life of a Very Brazen Shetland Pony and a Logical Scientist"
Commonly called
"I wonder if maybe Bertrand Russell really
Could find the answer to the missing King's hairpiece
Before or after he has to marry the newest governess
(Or the secretary) and get his hearty Shetland pony penned
Himself tied in yet another tangled matrimonial knot?"
But of course it was only an allusion.To mental traps
Not metaphor this piece.Just gunk in the mind.
The conclusion to the proof what really mattered,
And hearing France moved into social democracy
He was said to have stated, "God is now officially dead,
And the hairpiece a device to obscure the truth of it."
Monday, September 3, 2007
If I walked
If I Walked
If I walked in the shoes of one of my students
I would have to
try to exist between at least three different worlds
create a meaning from and through confusion
filter through disjointed and unconnected meanings
face the unknown in every minute
risk self
hold firmly onto myself
organize towards goals I don't have context to understand
wait for a me
be tense and uncomfortable
steal away and dance my own dance
hope for a teacher to unlock the beauty
navigate between my father mother grandparent auntie uncle and my school
look down and assume a posture of submissiveness
read bits of phonics that sound like counting in japanese
hurl towards standards like a launched nuclear rocket
accept a system run by adults lacking the ability to give me context
rather than be the mission statement read one that says I am a "test"
sometimes go hungry
sometimes go alone
sometimes be embarassed by who I am
often regret who I am not
If I had to walk in the shoes of my children I would become a better person.
I would understand the way of children looking to us as teachers to make a better and fairer , more caring world.
Can I walk in the shoes of my children as I work each day to teach them.....
To be my children , to be in this position in our world,
is to be the ultimate reflection on what our world values.
These, our children, are our mirror holding firmly up to us who we really are.
For them, let's be something with head and heart, soul and concern, and let's place doing ahead of testing...let's create meaning again.
If I walked in the shoes of one of my students
I would have to
try to exist between at least three different worlds
create a meaning from and through confusion
filter through disjointed and unconnected meanings
face the unknown in every minute
risk self
hold firmly onto myself
organize towards goals I don't have context to understand
wait for a me
be tense and uncomfortable
steal away and dance my own dance
hope for a teacher to unlock the beauty
navigate between my father mother grandparent auntie uncle and my school
look down and assume a posture of submissiveness
read bits of phonics that sound like counting in japanese
hurl towards standards like a launched nuclear rocket
accept a system run by adults lacking the ability to give me context
rather than be the mission statement read one that says I am a "test"
sometimes go hungry
sometimes go alone
sometimes be embarassed by who I am
often regret who I am not
If I had to walk in the shoes of my children I would become a better person.
I would understand the way of children looking to us as teachers to make a better and fairer , more caring world.
Can I walk in the shoes of my children as I work each day to teach them.....
To be my children , to be in this position in our world,
is to be the ultimate reflection on what our world values.
These, our children, are our mirror holding firmly up to us who we really are.
For them, let's be something with head and heart, soul and concern, and let's place doing ahead of testing...let's create meaning again.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Rejection
Heidi finally explained it, hearing enough.
And I still can't unwind why anyone was so mean.
"Look it's classic projection, a narcissist.
Maybe a male borderline.
Axis 2, I can't deal with them.
You farm these cases out. "
And I sat and thought about
A time you said it didn't matter,
You'd just take care of a me, if you could.
A few days later told me
You really just needed a shrink.
(then the drink, then space, then
Your job was demanding all time)
And of your interviews and family.
A dog I am you wrote, replaced
Written now as nothing was "because"
Hidden and from a vine.
I thought about a time out walking
Three things in my silent night
A star shooting, Venus and son, and closer home, a crane.
Bringing me a renewed wave of pain.
The sullied past, the trust gored,
the stupid hope, the scored game.
The name.
Heidi slid it in her envelope to contain it.
Gnawing a hole it bit me again.
And I still can't unwind why anyone was so mean.
"Look it's classic projection, a narcissist.
Maybe a male borderline.
Axis 2, I can't deal with them.
You farm these cases out. "
And I sat and thought about
A time you said it didn't matter,
You'd just take care of a me, if you could.
A few days later told me
You really just needed a shrink.
(then the drink, then space, then
Your job was demanding all time)
And of your interviews and family.
A dog I am you wrote, replaced
Written now as nothing was "because"
Hidden and from a vine.
I thought about a time out walking
Three things in my silent night
A star shooting, Venus and son, and closer home, a crane.
Bringing me a renewed wave of pain.
The sullied past, the trust gored,
the stupid hope, the scored game.
The name.
Heidi slid it in her envelope to contain it.
Gnawing a hole it bit me again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
