A prayer to let me change profession
to change my being and existence
to something else
bread
To give up my degree and experience
and walk away feels
30% great
20% sad
but mostly inevitable
to celebrate i’m steady drinking a cocktail
with kratom
that’s bad i know
but the 20% sad is incredibly menacing
i don’t do sad, it’s not safe for me
need to keep head up, kopf hoch (german)
i want to do a craft, a service that’s needed
i want to do women’s work
and survive on it
i don’t want to teach in capitalism
i present myself, chewed up, spit out
like a hairball, or a tonsil lolith
stinky, calcium deposits, suicides
i don’t want to do it anymore
so i’m just sitting here waiting for them to call and fire me
while getting tipsy and high
because i intend to not degrade myself with self pity
i plan to soldier forward and forgive myself
facts i did my best in their world
nothing more you can do than that
i apologized for my anger to the kids
that’s the most i could do, after the fact
but no more teaching, while teammates judge me
i’ll hermit as much as i can from now on
the kids are going to psych wards and prison either way
i was just a sometimes sunny dot in there world, but then also
a scary dot in their world. i admit it. i retire.
i can’t stay calm in some circumstances, like when i’m sick
and they’re understaffed, i can’t do it for sure 100%
i might crash out again
and honestly that’s par for the course, so hopefully everyone
forgives me for it. that’s not the real me.
No Place Like Home
Well, I think I’m going to be fired soon, for real.
People reported the details of a couple crash-outs, and me being a bitch to kids, or sharp toned. Who knows what all they complained about.
Maybe I wasn’t doing a good enough job.
But it was my best!
Doh!!!
So wth am I going to do? First of all, find a new type of job,
but what kind?
Would it be possible, one that’s easier for more money?
I think I tried teaching enough.
But I also got in trouble at other (corporate) types of jobs for being myself.
There’s no job like home.
So, there goes that. This is a hard time of year for me, like my mom said.
She’s right. It is. I don’t know why. I’ve crashed out at several jobs at this time of year.
At least I turned in good reports for them before they let me go.
Hopefully they’ll still give me some kind of job reference.
Like, hypothetically I’m still fit for other types of jobs, right?
What kind, even?
I’ve always been desperate, not chosey.
I take the first one offered, and settle in a couple weeks after spending 1.5 years at a place, on average.
I knew this was would go bad, though. I’m not what people want in a teacher. I’m just a person who’s barely surviving the psychic reality of 2006. Or the physical one. But I was showing up with shit for them to do, and interacting with them all day.
I guess we’ll see. :/
Tiny Victories
My Amazon Prime Subscription was up on April 8th
I chose to put it on hold
I will probably never use it again though after 10+ years
Goodbye, Auf Wedersein, Ciao
It was so much harder to leave you than you’d think
Dear John, I got so many good things from you
You’re so convenient for me, shopping was cheaper
with your discount of complicity, and I’ll miss that
in material ways that I hope are worth it in the bigger picture
that includes other people than me, that includes the whole world
and an infinite future, where working, participating, and growing food
happens locally, and progress happens locally, while peace spreads globally
I have more investments in the big tech and big America to shed
More tiny benefits to relinquish
Excuses are excuses
I can’t because I need this until I don’t need it because I replace it with something local with a human face or faces.
I was worshipping the god of convenience
but the idol is getting smashed
on cheap vodka and whiskey
Cheap friends
Expensive enemies
I might not get the best deals anymore delivered to my door like Santa
Clause working year round, but I get to know that I escaped, for now.
I escaped part of them, a part of it, despite logic saying, oh hush,
the energy centers and slavery will happen no matter what you do
Might as well get 30% off,
but then my name is on the books.
It’s already on them. I’m already a flawed role model, if anything.
I bought and sold and mixed and mingled with the lowest shelf liquors.
and I paid for that sin with misery, like Iran said on social media, a living hell
What did they mean by that? What do they know about our particular hell
and living it? Do they really know or do they bluff? Men don’t know about suffering, they’re bluffing, but they hit the nail on the head with the missle
either way, it’s true it’s hell. Never being good enough, rat on a wheel for love.
I did have a magical poem to say in New York and Brooklyn
and even way back in college, and it worked for sleep
and all kinds of survival, to sum it up you can relax, you can love yourself,
you can figure yourself, and accept everything, exactly the way it is
JUST LIKE THIS, Not after it resolves or improves, but during it.
Not with faith but logic, believing in the science of unconditional love.
I repeated that to get through a lot of anxious hours.
does it still work when the problems spread out?
Some information got in- about the world- about us
and we’re guilty as carnivores eating carcasses
and we’re done for, and we did it
And we could stop it, but we don’t
We say we can’t
and someone laughs maniacally
and church music starts
It still works
It will work in any setting
that you need to accept
because even if i run across that border
while shots ring out, and i make it, somehow
i have to leave people behind
and then i have to go back for them
so there’s no use waiting until the trouble’s passed
to relax, better to sleep here, in the trenches, meter by meter
This plan has the longest range, the most control,
but there’s nothing else now, at all
I hate to kill in the name of people already elimated
but here we are
Goodbye, Google
it has to be done, it has to be done
starve them, war of attrition
we go somewhere else
we leave our ghosts
it has to be done
it can’t be avoided
we can’t stay here
and we can’t stay there
with our old lives
our old needs
we have to simply leave them before
they kill us
and we don’t have weapons
we only have to walk away
well, we might have to run
and we might have to hide
we just have to rip ourselves free
with our minds
lose a limb, lose a lip
we have to go or die blindly
and leave them behind
and leave our old haunts
and our networks and doctors
and our stores and brands and cars
it’s us who has to leave it
they won’t leave us
they’ll suck our blood dry
the illusion of stuck is real to a horse
stuck in the mud
no threats or bribes will move her
no sweet talk
no tug
no beg
they’re waiting for us to leave this
and we’re saying we can't
Friendly Intruder
I had a sweet dream about you, last night, old man
I crept into and onto your porch, I crept into your house
cuz I needed to sleep, and it was cold outside, and I laid in the corner
and hoped you didn’t hear me come in.
Other people showed up, I don’t remember who, could have been family
I wasn’t mad at them, but they woke you up
and you came out, and found me sleeping on the floor on my coat
To just let me rest a little longer, old sir
And I’ll hurry on my way as soon as I can, maybe now
I often dream about entering other people’s houses.
Sometimes I need a shortcut, and their house is on its path.
Sometimes I’m just curious.
What kind of person wouldn’t yell at scream at a stranger
who came right into their house to sleep in the entry room?
What kind of resigned, gentle soul wouldn’t be afraid of that?
In any case, he wasn’t, and I snuggled back down on my coat.
If I close my eyes, he can’t see me.
Real Goals for the Rest of My Life
Regain balance and fitness (do physical therapy exercises)
Be able to do yoga again
Walk without pain or discomfort
Have a flat belly again
Feel strong
Call mom and dad at least once per week
Pay off my (small) loans
That’s it
I’m not a great teacher because my students get high scores on tests (they don’t).
I’m a great teacher because I’m good at writing to describe and quantify behavior.
I could quantify your behavior at the drop of a hat.
I can quantify my own behavior. And I do.
I’m not a great teacher because I never yell at kids.
I’m a great teacher because I expect them to yell at me.
I’m a great teacher because I can delegate shit.
But mostly because they know I love them
Just like this: criminally minded deliquents
Drops of rain just falling wherever
I don’t promise success or even tomorrow
I acknowledge I’m not particularly loyal or dependable
I call earning “bribes and threats”
They know I’m not perfect
I’m not a great teacher
I’m a great writer
and lover of the unclaimed luggage.
This morning I worried
Since I said I want Iran to get some hits in
Since I said I’m glad China is still getting through the pass
Since I said I want us to lose
I thought, (imagination providing unnecessary anxiety)
What if they come to pick me up? Like, I wake up and there’s a man
or woman (more convincing) in my house, in the penumbra
and they say, You can come with us now, it’s the revolution to fight
You’ve been talking about, and we need you.
For some specific reason, we noticed you and we are recruiting
you to the armed forces of proletariat, or something
“Will you everything and come with us?”
What about my dog and cat?
They can’t come.
Then I can’t come.
You’ve got the wrong person.
I just want to post online while other people risk their lives.
I want too see flames without throwing the cocktail.
I can’t bare leaving my pets.
Then the recruiter laughs bitterly, YOUR PETS!
Ah, little American brat,
pets are nothing. I lost my pets as par for the course
Wait till you see the children you love, and your parents
blown up by the enemy. Pets are nothing.
We have dead pets everywhere where I come from
Pets are lucky if they survive
but most won’t
Come with us, now.
I can’t come with you! I have pets! I can’t disappear from my students or my family, they won’t understand. They won’t believe it. And they shouldn’t.
You’ll have to kidnap me to take me, and I don’t want it.
I’ll stop posting shit online.
I’ll stop rooting for Iran, China, and the other “enemies” of the West.
Because I’m not a sleeper cell, I’m a shitty American
at heart, no guts, no brains, just a straw man.
Goes up in flames from one arrogant cigarette improperly disposed.
It wasn’t easy to face our class yesterday, when I came back after the weekend plus a personal day on Monday.
Tom was still very mad about how I’d been mean and called him bratty.
I said I wish I could do the whole day over. I’d do it totally differently.
I’m sorry I was mean and said you were being bratty.
So, I’m sorry, you know.
Yeah, said Tom, with smug relief, You’d better be, he said, and his eyes lit up, met mine a little bit, grateful, hopeful, then flitting away, rocking in his seat, drawing something incredible.
You’ll have to, ah, give me another chance to try to work on not yelling when I’m feeling sick or not up to everything.
He had some idea it had to do wtih my parents, or something I didn’t understand, but he said clearly, but you still can’t do that, even if “something” or my parents are sick. I didn’t realy understand but it was in front of the whole class and my job was to listen and model apologizing, not seek a logical narrative.
Everybody let us move on, so I’m grateful for that. Speaks to the trust we’ve built already as a group.
First thing in the morning, I let him glare at me a little bit. I was in a totally different space than last Friday, when I “lost my temper” being scary teacher. After seeming like I was a nice teacher (that was one of Tom’s complaints last friday, I thought you were NICE!). When my teammates said, and he said, you were mean, I agreed right away. I am mean. I can be mean. I was being out of control when I started yelling back at them (because I was sick) NOT an excuse, Tom! I agree. Let’s both agree on that being fair. It’s not an excuse to be mean (yell at) people when you’re sick, or break the computer or window, but it’s much more likely to happen. That’s a timeline of scientific facts, ma’am or sir.