To All English Teachers, From We

This fool is teaching new form

As if youth never left old bones.

He sputters

Points

And emphasizes gold rings.

A fool for young beauty

A Wilde fan of classic thoughts.

But true youth sits before him.

Much uglier,

Squat like toads

“we was sittin’ fat and wet and damp and we was droolin’ on the floor and we stretch skin and fill brains and leak out our sides and our voices don’t speak no more’

We write no more

We speak no more

We are no more digi-tal,

We are soul and we let all meaning go.

We breathe out poems like cigarette smoke.

And what guide is he?

What woman or man can guide her way through our words?

Our failing punctuation?

Who convinces herself to understand the depths of our obscure feelings?

Our mystery and vagueness?

This fool who guides you fools through secret society,

Through our homes and nests and hideaways

And explains us?

Chalk explanation on the boards,

Erased before the ringing bells

To be explained by ‘guides’

To be simplified for fools.

A fool cannot understand us. They cannot define us.

They may educate, but not define.

They cannot sort us,

Cannot label us.

We are not poets.

We are not writers.

We are the ill-defined.

We are the meaningless

We speak small truths

We speak black lies,

We are the ground shakers

We are the breath takes

We are the uninspired

We are the word speakers and murmurs

That is all.

Humbled fools are we who whisper tonight.