Plucked for her beauty 

This year the fluff of sycamore
hovers
rains
speckles
puddles
skydives past barely budding April branches
    onto lawn impatient for mowing
sticks to shoes for a lift to kitchen’s
    catch-all mats

This fluff’s seeds have little chance
of raising up bold sycamores
yet they earnestly pursue
their windblown games

much as I ponder how to juggle
unruly words to verses
knowing they’ve hardly
a chance to quicken
in printer’s ink

Today I feel like an unfinished painting
A canvas of random drips and streaks            
          even Pollack lovers would have a hard time deciphering  

Well her denims are definitely generous      they might say       
      And her palette does muddle toward Aegean daydreams
But   personally     I find her blues way too moody  

Just look at the smeared lipstick       the Baroque blush     
                   Her radical reds need an organic faith     a bleeding perhaps  

And that orange        My Dear       too fussy              
                                         Too frantic              too . . . . . . . political  

Where is the purple delusion old women are supposed to sport?    
   That Hendrix haze certainly does expose all her runs and sags                          
                         Didn’t she once exhibit a spilled wine motif?  

Now that crow dotting there        those hieroglyphics of coal             
                  Could be her chiaroscuro eyes      
The midnight manifesto of her ink-suffered pages        

        All this white space     however    is a tacky exposure
Like brain waves let loose in a cloud store  

See how those green dribbles just limp the landscape                    
      Fluid as a dying creek in August     
                 Some mossy crawling through the hollows  

But now that yellow       that yellow has sublime promise
       With just a dab of butter     a pop of corn    maybe a stretch of daffodil                           
                                                 She could be the sun                

Sometimes I ponder: Am I a good teacher?
I’ve studied so many tricks
try to follow all the rules of school
ABCs and 123s
but I question what it all means

Sometimes I think: Someone is better.
they know all the tricks
don’t follow all the rules because tenure
teaches what they want at their leisure
and don’t feel the weight of administrative pressure

Sometimes I doubt: I don’t think I can do this.
the majority student demographic is different from me
it makes me feel like I’m a person in between a comedic tragedy
because I go in with the hope to try and help each kid
but I am different from this place they grew up in

Sometimes I feel: I am no good to them.
someone else should teach them in my stead
because they know them better, lived the life they’ve led
and they’ll choose them over me instead
that’s the comparison in my head

Sometimes I am told: Thank you, Mrs. Jones
by a student who doesn’t quite fit the mold
just like me, living in a different reality
and find solace in kindred commonality
in my classroom’s abnormality

Sometimes I’d like to believe: Maybe I am needed
by children who feel defeated
by the rural ideas of their hometown
because their identity has been shot down
and is being attacked by governments now

Sometimes I ask: What can I do?
to help make things improve
ensure that the storms they’ll have to weather
end them up someplace far better
but no answers I can find in these letters

Sometimes I accept this fact: All I can do is be there for them.
try to give them hope when they are condemned
by classmates who just don’t understand
that she is not a man
that they are more than the societal gender span

Sometimes I wonder: What does it mean to be a teacher?
treat every kid equally and equitably
but when society doesn’t do that
and restricts us from teaching them all of life’s facts
how are we supposed to react?

Sometimes: The word to define this young teacher.
they are uncertain, struggle to stand on their own two feet
trying to teach lessons that feel utterly incomplete
wanting to believe they can grow young minds
but are pinned down by emotional and societal confines

I’ve come to realize
suddenly or not so
suddenly that I don’t have to
relinquish quite so easily
or better yet, I should relinquish it all
easily
because I deserve so much more than I bargain for

i’ve become obsessed with the word “not” as in when you ask how i’m doing i will show you the white space of a photograph there exists only one image of my mother as a child and she is scowling in it a dark already drawn around her eyes when the bombs arrived they bleached the stone and our living was only evidenced by shadows i’ve searched the exits at every party i’ve ever been to once even a deer looked through me and kept eating i got close enough to see its wound and understood my favorite rooms are made of glass and i sit for hours inside them my mother was always a good child despite and my grandmother was never a sweet woman i seem to pick all the wrong fruit at the grocery store it is the only dying i’ve held in my hands when they wheeled my grandfather away his toes pressed through the glass and a sound escaped my mother like a child they had stitched his eyes together days before to hide the nothing behind them he does not smile in the photograph either already made up of negative space his eyes back then were always set behind sunglasses as if foreshadowing their disappearance of course i have been after them for years i still look for them in the bottom of every cabinet

vertigo
eye floaters
ear crickets
missing teeth
a left-footed limp
permanently pulled groin
hyper-active thyroid 
words slippping away
   on the stage coach going south

old age states of nature
you rub them like smooth stones
accept their limitations
keep them in the dark
for what can the young guess
   about their existence

you imagine the next life
being without authority
it’s not that you do whatever you want
but whatever you need to
in a casual unhurried manner
like handing a bucket of well water
   to the next person in line on the fire brigade
 maybe it’s a library everyone is saving

each day will be wondrous 
& will bring another drop of clarity
as slowly you slide into the habit
of just being a good guy

First,    I apologize
But I saw you            today
Wasn’t        too late                already falling
Tried to turn                but our story wasn’t 
                            on and on and on
Like a never-ending
On and on
                    never-ending song
                        I sacrificed
                                my time                        your life
                                    too close,                   amount to nothing
I can hear your                                music on the
                                on and on and on
Like a never-ending

                    never            song
                                    stay                            ?
Are we done?
Can you                                                        ?

O
Like a never-ending song
        and
Like a n    ending