With three more weeks of holiday vacation,
Lisa and I’ve started studying 5 hours a day.
You can read a novel for atmosphere
but you have to puzzle over and wring-out academic books
- with their essays and worksheets after every chapter.
I feel a simultaneous focus and boredom
- but the pull of school is staggering
- like resisting it could break me apart.
you can’t wait - all around the country, thousands of Yalies are already back hard at it
(I used to be a teacher. My last year teaching a student poisoned my drink. The principal refused to involve the authorities and the student received only one day of in school suspension sitting in the office doing worksheets and was returned to my class the next day. It wasn't the only reason I quit teaching but it was one of the last straws. I had been bullied when I was a student and I decided I was done being abused by both students and administration.)
She put the poison in my cup
laughed like a lunatic as I drank
the sound the same as I’d heard
a thousand times
echoing off the walls
of classrooms and corridors
bathroom stalls and halls
Sinister as a serpent
sinking its fangs into my flesh
Snickering as I seized in my death throes
Harassed and tortured like a heretic
just as I’d been back then
Burn the witch!
My blood congealing into goo
too thick to pass through my veins
Venom seeping into every pore
Why did I think it would be different than before
The same malevolent monsters I once knew
hidden behind the masks of cherubic children
only today the tack in the chair is a deadly dare
Biology TED talk, Ken Burns WWII
Multiple choice plus open response =
Teacher cares, out there among the English
Mathematics, fractions to imaginary i
Anything can happen any time, I mean
Mass killing--public school, movie theater,
Post office when every mother wears a gun
Yet happiness permeates like CO2 + sunlight
Photosynthesis + electricity = burning bush
Hot tea, hot shower pleasure perfect rest
Early to bed, no more lies, complexity
Poetry about history, i.e. Wolfowitz
As for non-fiction, most things qualify to know
Astrobiology, search for LUCA, FLO
Minerals on Titan, organisms on Enceladus
Divination on Iapetus, peace on Earth and Tethys
Volcanoes and tsunamis, Big Red One and Private Ryan
Don't stay up late, take your vitamins
Sin and crime being nothing more than
Mental malaise, imbalance. Love and compromise
Tolerance, practice worksheets, brilliance
Prejudice and superstition, Tha's a wrap
Nothin doin, ain't gonna happen, freedom's when
Yes is mostly a blessing and No is always an option
Some people find comfort in living the same day
Every day doing what they did yesterday in the same way.
I know a man who ate a ham sandwich with cheese plain
No condiments every day and cut exactly the same
I thrive on change. Daily seek out something new.
Learning racquetball kept me entertained in 1982.
As soon as we had the tournament all interest was gone.
I dropped racquetball never going back. For tournament I’d won.
Some women wear the same exact haircut for twenty years
To change it up would instigate and initiate such fears
I know a woman whose hair looks like 1960’s Loretta Lynn
A different style is suggested every decade by her kin.
My hair has been black and blue, beige and turquoise too.
If I had to keep it the same way twice it would make me blue.
Some teachers can print their worksheets a month in advance.
Given a choice, I would rather have gigantic wood-ticks in my pants.
Some people live the same year every single year.
That would be my absolute biggest baddest fear.
Stand up and cheer very loudly if you know your a’s, b’s, and c’s.
Not so fast, Quinton, Hallie, Sammy, Tom, Brandon, and Kimberly.
Kindergarten is tough if you don’t know your letters or how to write pages, numbered.
Kindergarten is more like first grade used to be when your grandparents so lumbered.
Unfortunately, five is the new seven, because most of your peers have been in school 2 years
By the time these seasoned 5’s reach kindergarten, they are way ahead in knowledge, worksheets, and cheers.
They know the school song, the slogan, the principal, the vice, and both pledge of aliegences all by heart.
They are so far ahead of you who did not attend preschools, that it is not a very even start.
Just be aware that what you are learning is for your own good, and the good of your parents, but how?
When you grow up and you know so much stuff, hopefully you can begin taking care of them both now.
The classroom of judgement awaits at my school
And I felt like a dumb little fool
For I have not studied for the test
That is waiting hungrily in its nest.
I stepped out of the big shining bus
That always brightens us
But carries us to a place
Full of worksheets that we have to face.
As soon as I enter the arena,
The teachers send out the monster hyena
That tries to take our grades down
And change our smile to frown
Although I made it through,
I can't get this fact out of my shoe
The fact that I have to confront the test
Still remains like a pest
The time has come
To finish what has to be done
For me to face the beast
That wants me as its feast
This is the final judgement
"swish swish" my pencil went
Attacking the creature with stealth
Continuously decreasing its health
Night’s wings are silent swift, fleeing as Verse
dresses in red silk, luring away a mind
meant to finish preparations to nurse
literacy in the youth of mankind.
Mental acrobatics (and good balance)
fail as midnight slips by, stealing away
psychical worksheets unacknowledged chance
to increase children’s prowess in word play.
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