Long Textbooks Poems
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then:
I swallowed escape
in pastel capsules,
my pockets jingled with regret.
The nights pulsed—
bass, sweat, strangers.
Every weekend was a blackout baptism.
Every Monday, a resurrection I didn’t ask for.
now:
I wake before the alarm.
Feed cats who love me
with a certainty I never questioned.
My home doesn’t hum with danger—
only kettle steam and quiet purring.
then:
I stole to feel full,
thought hunger was my birthright.
I measured worth
by how well I could vanish.
Almost traded years
for a number on a cell door.
now:
I count anniversaries of sobriety,
not court dates.
Four years clean,
nearly one without drinking.
No more smoke in my lungs,
or fog in my choices.
then:
The floor was often my bed.
Sofas borrowed.
Hostels echoing with strangers’ ghosts.
I called chaos “home,”
because I didn’t know better.
now:
My walls are mine—
painted in colours I chose.
My name’s on the lease.
So is my joy.
And the love that brushes my hand
in the morning light.
then:
I mistook noise for connection.
Friends who disappeared with daylight,
jobs that slipped through my fingers,
love that cut deeper than silence.
now:
I hold steady.
Four years with someone who sees me.
No parties.
No promises I can’t keep.
Just textbooks, shift work,
and something like peace.
what makes me smile?
That the girl who once vanished
into every room she entered
now walks in like she belongs.
That I traded craving for contentment—
a full fridge, a warm bed,
a quiet mind.
That my joy isn’t borrowed anymore.
It lives here now,
between the purring cats
and the humming radiators,
in the way I kiss my partner goodbye,
and mean it—
knowing I’ll come home.
It’s in my voice
when I say, “I’m so happy,”
and no one flinches.
Not even me.
What makes me smile?
Not just the life I’ve built—
but the stranger I used to be,
and how she somehow
carried me here.
In dynamic classrooms
Amid inquiry and exploration
with my mind racing, in casual attire or rolled-up sleeves,
With my hands on experimental apparatus,
questions, not answers or rote memorisation
Next to workbenches, savouring discovery,
Standing among student projects or in nature, even in a community
space.
Listening to passionate debates, being challenged
by young minds questioning everything
I can foster a laboratory of democracy.
Critical thinking, pragmatism, social engagement, scientific method, art,
ethics.
When one student connects learning to real life, I am elated...
I am no longer a mere instructor.
I am in a town hall, under a microscope, in society's framework,
I am a facilitator, a co-learner, a social reformer, and a progressive
thinker.
In evolving educational spaces,
Surrounded by hands-on experiences, not confined by textbooks at all,
Yet continuously reflecting on theory and practice,
I learned to revolutionise education.
Textbooks,
chalk dust,
young men
full of lust.
School bus,
school bag,
mathematics,
what a drag!
Woodwork,
English lit,
some pass,
some quit.
Autumn leaf,
summer sun,
playin’ truant
on the run.
Fibrolite
prefab,
bunson burner,
science lab.
Trampoline,
gym rope,
girls flirt,
boys hope!
Written: 1992
———
I attended “Rangi”
1974 ~ 1977.
Why can't the world be like it was when I was young
No one cleaning up dog-due dung
Kids dying right and left of polio and measles
Mumps running rampant like scorpions and beetles
Fathers employing razor belts
on recalcitrant sons and leaving welts
Mothers teaching daughters to clean and cook
poor-mouthing math and science textbooks
White folks lording it over illiterate Knee grows
Butchering Espanol -- and a few unlucky amigos
It was all so much simpler way back then
Cowboys shot Indians on the count of ten
So, why can't the world be like it was when I was young
Well, hey, I guess it is ~ English still ain't America's mother tongue...
It was a sunny sunday, I sat in the courtyard, I was wrapping the textbooks, Suddenly,I noticed an earth worm, It tried to go into the wet soil, Half of its body was in the soil, Soon an ant went near the worm, It bit and tried to pull out the worm,. But it couldn't succeed in its attempt, It left the worm and went towards its hole, Soon a swam of ants came out of the hole, They marched towards the worm in a line, All the ants swarmed the worm and bit it, The worm pushed and pulled its coiled body, Atlast it came out of the muddy soil, Now the ants swarmed the struggling worm, They lifted the worm after a few minutes, And they marched towards the ant's hole, It looked like a large funeral procession, They tried to push the long worm into its hole, After a strenuous battle they pushed the worm, Now ,I learned two lessons from them, First, union is our strength, Second, there's no substitute for hard work.
They brought me the child
long before he became a man feared for his deadly silence.
He sat at the edge of the chair
like the edge of the world itself,
watching fingers twitch,
watching mouths bend into counterfeit smiles,
watching fathers slam doors
two seconds before the storm arrived.
The others called us “too sensitive.”
But sensitivity is merely pattern recognition
without anesthesia.
He learned early
that love could arrive holding flowers
and leave carrying a weapon.
That footsteps in hallways
forecast weather better than television.
That a tightening jaw,
a shifted glance,
a laugh half a second too sharp
could predict catastrophe
with mathematical precision.
So the nervous system adapted.
Not badly.
Brilliantly.
The brain became a lighthouse
spinning across black water,
searching endlessly for wreckage.
And eventually
the search itself
became the illness.
Because when humans survive enough fires,
they begin smelling smoke
inside rainstorms.
They read danger into pauses,
betrayal into fatigue,
violence into ordinary human clumsiness.
The amygdala, overworked old sentinel,
no longer distinguishes
between a wolf
and the vigilant rabid memory of one.
This is how extremes are born.
Not from madness—
but from repetition.
A person cornered too many times
stops living in the center of the room.
One memorizes exits.
Studies eyes.
Measures tone.
Dissects every syllable
like a bomb technician clipping wires.
And the tragedy—
the terrible, clinical tragedy—
is that that child is often correct.
Just not always.
But “not always”
is where relationships come to die.
Because eventually
the loved one says:
“You think everything is an attack.”
And the wounded mind whispers back:
“No.
Only the things that look exactly like the last one.”
In my profession
we give this elegant names:
Hypervigilance,
trauma response,
hostile attribution bias.
But beneath the textbooks
it is merely this:
A human being
who learned survival then fare well.
A rabbit in the wild, unlike his friends the birds, goes about his entire life without saying a word.
At least that’s what the scientists tell us…and every textbook too…but after having walked with rabbits for a while…I wonder if that’s true.
I love watching rabbits…in their quiet solemnity…doing the things that rabbits do…that is…until they notice me.
They look at me suspiciously…I’m sure they want to know…
will I try to hurt them…am I a friend…or foe.
Of course it usually doesn’t matter…they are not inclined to stay.
They turn and whisper to one another…then quickly hop away.
Which makes me wonder…after witnessing this firsthand
If rabbits have a language…one we just don’t understand…
What if rabbits speak to one another in whispers…whispers we can’t hear…but whispers all the other rabbits pick up…loud…and clear?
What if rabbits are just a little quieter but have been communicating all along…what if all those scientists and textbooks have been wrong?
What if rabbits have a complex language…a wide vocabulary array…but what if rabbits only speak when they have something significant to say…
If we took the time, to observe them in the world that they inhabit
think of how much we could learn just by listening to the rabbits.
Think of all they have to teach us…if we could only find a way
to listen to their whispers…and hear what rabbits have to say.
The carpet used to be a plastic kingdom,
Where Barbie lived the lives I used to crave.
I hit the age I always dreamed of holding,
Expecting to be grown, and wise, and brave.
But looking in the mirror, nothing shifted.
I see the same kid staring at the glass.
The wisdom that I waited for evaporated,
While heavy, adult breaths begin to pass.
Sixteen is brushing closely down my shoulders.
The slack is gone; the childhood curtain falls
.I miss the days of crayons on the floorboards,
Before the stacks of textbooks built these walls.
I miss when dreams were wild and unattainable,
When being a princess felt so safely far.
Because today, the dream demands my labor,
And pressure guides the course of every star.
I pour my life into a future uniform.
I fight for perfect scores to bridge the gap
.But now I fear the sea of other perfections,
And losing my own map.
In the greenhouse of young minds, we plant the seeds of tomorrow,
Where knowledge blooms and awareness grows, we must not borrow
But cultivate a future, green and bright,
For the climate crisis looms a formidable sight.
Let us root our lessons in the soil of truth,
Let us nurture saplings of wisdom in our youth,
Let us prune away ignorance, let understanding flourish,
Let us water young minds with facts they must cherish.
The earth is our classroom, its pain our urgent call,
Its rivers our textbooks, its forests our lecture hall.
We must leaf through pages of melting ice caps,
And highlight the lines where biodiversity collapses.
In this school of life, where nature is teacher supreme,
We are failing a test with consequences extreme.
But education is our chlorophyll, turning light to action,
Photosynthesising change, causing a chain reaction.
Anaphora of urgency, let it echo in our halls:
Climate change is real, climate change appals,
Climate change demands we rewrite our story,
Climate change tests our claim to glory.
Let us compost old ideas that led us astray,
Let us innovatively recycle knowledge.
In this ecosystem of learning, every student a key species,
Together we'll solve this crisis, piece by piece.
We'll weather this storm with the power of the mind,
Leave no child behind, no solution unrefined.
In this greenhouse effect of collective education,
We'll cultivate a future of ecological restoration.
So let our classrooms be fertile ground for change,
Where ideas cross-pollinate, where solutions range.
In this graduation from ignorance to awareness,
We'll turn the tide of destruction, and show the world we care.
For we are all students in Earth's university,
Learning to live in harmonious diversity.
With education as our compass, pointing true north,
We'll navigate to a future sustainable henceforth.
These people I safely know
who like to healthy grow
fail to distinguish
between cooperative housing
and cooperative households,
cooperative countries
and communities
Which
as we all seem to know
although textbooks often fail to show
include cooperative gardening
and cooperative farming
and possibly cooperative
organic management
of a polytheistic living planet
without monotheistic competitive
monopolistic cultural intent.
In each interdependent case
we explore something together,
some primal trinitarian relationship
between healthy resilience
and safe transitions
and beautifully balanced
resonant energy
Synergy produces
co-arising fruits of sexual
sensual
and sacred exotic
erotic regenerate sensations
Further witchy wonder which,
like resonantly tasty
and fragrant,
richly brown and black
white and green
orange and yellow
red textured
robust stews
Cooperatively touch
and feel
and show
and thereby know
a primally sublime
healthy
safe
and beautiful homebrew.