When you finally find a quiet place,
its too quiet. The audacity of your own thoughts,
too clear, unsympathetic, all racing, all proclaiming
"ME! LISTEN TO ME!" and the jumble of them,
all so child like, all so immature, like the
7th graders that fill your day, needy, impatient,
and you end up trying to soften, to redirect,
to scold or discipline them rather than
listen. Rather than hear, investigate, dissect, negotiate.
Rather than warm them with your
own heart, you write them off as
just more traffic noices, engines unmuffled,
honks and whistles ,
more blaring jazz and peoples' voices
straining, screeching, yelling
over the raucus.
Tempered chaos is still chaos, muffled
or not the roar is enraging, a constant
tickle, a need to squint, a clenched
jaw, always crane-lifted shoulders.
I spend my opened eyed hours tensly
debating, the best use of a moment, the best
plan for the next. Its a straining choke-hold
of the present. So that nothing is clear,
all tunnel vision, all confined and echoey
as darkness surrounds me.
Concretely I grade essays, tests and
worksheets. I ask for refinement, definition,
rearrangements and clarification.
I reach into the jumble of alien words
that are meant to be English, and clutch at significance
whenever I can reach it.
I preach clarity of thought through mumbles
and gasps and mistakes and breaches,
preach clarity of action while trembling
on murky footpaths, through the dark on creaky bridges.
I hear the river, its spoken of only in
warnings, the "You should know...s" the
"Be aware...s" the storied victims.
Ever present scanning, imagining, holding
stern, always planning, a need for an escape,
a resting place, a way out, a back up
just in case...
And holding this back pack,
stops us short, from truly getting
acquainted... "I'm here NOW,
Listen! I've had a messy thought...."
Says the uniformed vagrant.
Friday, February 27, 2015
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