As I stood in the car,
Traveling from the airport to Oulu,
I could hear the radio,
Where the speaker
Was speaking in finnish;
I could not but notice that foreign accent,
And those repetitive sounds,
In every two syllabuses
Of «tt»
And «kk»
It is needless to say,
That I could not understand one word;
It is in that moment though,
That I was seeing the language
In its essence;
Seeing the language for what it is;
A set of sounds
That are not connected to anything or anyone;
I have rituals
for the first day of class
like a superstitious athlete
they get me into a good frame of mind
where I feel like a juggernaut who has total agency
and I don’t need to seek validation
It’s a moment in time
I have all my books—stacked on my desk
they look serious—very nuts and bolts
I’ve beaten the syllabuses to death
to try to figure out where my power lies
learning is all energy, it’s a marathon
it’s hard to sustain that for the entire semester
so not switching off, now and then, is unrealistic
Still, I’m comfy in in a classroom (I’m a senior)
Good students are just a little weird.
I say hello to the moon so she won’t feel alone
I say ‘cheers,” before taking a shot of mouthwash.
If I lose my ID, my lucky pencil or something, I call out, “treasure hunt!”
When treating everyone to grubHub I ask, ‘the usual?’ When we’re done I ask, ‘how was everything this evening?’
If I see a random girl looking fabulous, I tell her, because if I get complimented, I think about it for a week.
.
.
A song for this:
Thetan by Single Gun Theory
Someone
Somewhere
Met something
And for some reason
He somehow
Froze
So says some
In a time where man gets reconstructed
Physically modified
Mentally damaged
Where some and one
Plural and singular
Join to make an unknown person
Someone
Where some and how
Answer and question
Join to make confusion
Somehow
Well sometimes some things
Are somehow set so simply
Such that they make sense
See you say simple sentences
Simply to sow seeds of self
Satisfaction by sacrificing
Sodomised septic singular
Stories sampling songs sung
By sirens in sweeping swirling syllabuses
So sound a singular soul
When certainty states surrender
Of some.
Thus one some
Where some
Thing some met
Reason some for and
How some he froze.
By Athi Godlo
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