Something Different

Ok, I'm the one usually writing the poetry, but this time one of my students in my AP Lit. class and in my AP Psychology class wrote one for me, about me. The estrogen comment involves my class of all girls, one boy.


Clocks
Clocks and strange toys and lots of art
Hanging effortlessly from the walls
You shuffle in like a mouse
Hurrying to find his house
"So what's up!?" you say
Louder than I think you intend

We talk and laugh and joke around
And when I leave I feel I've found
Someone understands and knows
Just how far away my mind goes

Desks
Desks in a circle
And no one in the middle
Empty-empty
Till we fill it with thoughts
Like a large melting pot

You have shown us that
Literature is not just about tastes
But the characters and meanings
Behind all that is said

We walk away
Not loving or hating
But with a little bit of something
Bigger than ourselves

Estrogen
Estrogen everywhere
You cannot hide
Psychology is a mixture
Of biology and the immaterial mind

As Christians it's okay
To try to comprehend
All that goes on inside the head

Words, times, minds
Always changing
Never ending
Understanding

You have made high school
Bearable
Changeable
Livable

So thank you
My counselor
My teacher
My friend
You have shown that
Literature is not just words
Psychology is not just chemicals
And I am not my own but God's

Gray Water, White Sky

When you told me you
had decided to sign contract
at a school in which I do not work
and leave the one in which I do,

When you said,
“This is not the end of our relationship,”
and we both laughed
because it sounded like a failed romance
and we were two men in my office,

I didn’t think to give
my opinion ,
or say what I thought of you,
or that I understood Daedalus.

I only swallowed and remembered the
television when I was growing
up. The colorless fuzzy images of
gray water and white sky.

Life in a Second

What is this other life I live?
Do I take on divinity
and create an image
of what I wish I was,
carefully selecting the items of me I
like and forming out of digital clay
only what I find tolerable?
Starting from scratch, do I
throw away the original blueprints
and build the new stronger,
better,
faster
version of Poet 2.0?

Or do I merely
birth a crying babe
into pixilated life?
A form released from molecules and age.
A man more like me
Than I could ever be myself.

The Muse

You’re difficult to interpret, you little, disembodied imp,
who, poised crossed leg and stretching at my keyboard,
urges me to write, but flirts me away from concentration.
Stripped of the physical,
you have taught me how much attraction
blends with intellect ,
blends with ageless sensibility,
blends with spontaneity,
blends with art.
Child of the land of my forefathers,
you lead me to examine their faith
and separate what I take as inheritance, and
what I set to the curb.
Correcting my grammar,
shaking my beliefs,
inspiring my spirit,
supporting my growth,
you make me wish that I was like you:
humble,
giving,
untameable,
free.

Pool

He is playing at the pool, this nine or ten year old boy with glowing white skin from indoors and a baseball cap he refuses to remove and wears like a crown of manhood. He is comfortable playing alone until he notices her, a girl about his age in a brown bathing suit the color of her hair. She swims up to him to engage him in play, splashing her greeting.

Everything she does he tries to do better, and they begin playing side by side. She races past him. He swims faster. They shoot water guns and bat a ball back and forth with their hands. He always lets her go first. He is straddling competition and chivalry, and he doesn’t understand why, but he doesn’t want her to go away. She is a tomboy, but there is softness to her moves. “I’m coming to the pool tomorrow,” he tells her before he leaves with his mother. She nods and laughs.

And I sit under a pool umbrella and watch because the girl is my nine year old daughter. My moleskine journal is afraid to accept my fountain pen memories of this moment. The young Romeo’s naive and innocent interest is both beautiful and frightening.

old moleskine
empty, off-white pages
damp with the pool’s tears