In the Classroom

The most potent sound in a university classroom

Is the click of a projector,

Followed by the soft rain

Of fingers on keyboards.

This soft, gentle falling

Not at all like the quiet harshness of knowledge,

Falls in arboretums, hallways and centers,

But never sounds in gardens or minds.

Knowledge is not soft rain.

Knowledge is a thunderstorm.

Knowledge is pounding skulls, the clashing of hearth and heart and heat

The clapping of disbelief is thunder, shattering the previous silent tense throbs of electricity

The tombs of puddles, rippling in the quiet rain is not

The rushing rivers of rolling waves overrunning beachways, roadways and pathways

That flood and overspill and still the torrents pour more in.

Knowledge is violent light streaking over skyways and twisting into new brightness, it is cracking and re-shackling the great powerful sky, its tightness

Knowledge kills

and fulfills and thrives in dark wide spaces like fields of hungry wheat twirling and thrashing in winds so harsh the earth shivers.

She shivers when knowledge roars and reaps and reeks.

Knowledge is so loud it deafens.   Knowledge is so hot it burns red hands on faces and sears and licks lips. Knowledge is so cold it burns stinging eyes and sears and licks locked blue lips.

Knowledge is more.

Knowledge exists outside, in the storms.

And she doesn’t exist. Because existence is a limitation.

And knowledge cannot be limited. 

Knowledge cannot be contained or restrained.

Knowledge isn’t given.

It’s earned.

Through blood and steam and tightening chests.

Knowledge is mother. Knowledge is father. Knowledge is screaming shouting hitting hoping heating whoring hacking lacking stuttering stacking stopping stalling seeking seeping soulsearing shaking making faking fulfilling stilling thrilling.

Knowledge is not a quiet rain.

Knowledge is.

Lustily

There is a dangerous word
I dare not mention.
I cannot know it's true extent
So I may inadvertantly lie,
the moment before i die;
I may peel open with suddeness
and know the words deeper worth
and may honestly see clear
the dangerous word as true
when pertaining to you.

The Rippling

There’s a velvet purple stain rippling where I once had a bruise made by cane sized fingers.

A deep red touch so heavy it smothered

And I only whispered half heartedly to you

About that dark thing I felt growing in knowing

When I was battled by spirits

And I wish I could have explained to you how broken it is

How disappointed I am

That I did not receive the worst

My bra straps never quivered

That my cane tinted stories aren’t the real darkness

Or deserving of

But that the great awful happened to others

Scissor stories

Sharpened by the passing of time and word

And that whiff of something indecent

I had enough imagination to see just the dark figure of it

As something awful

Just that cold cold cold cold cold cold cold cold sick knowing

The dark giant

With cane fingers

With scissor eyes

Was nearer my mother.

And I’d never know the whole flesh of it.