POETRY OF MEDIUM

Slow Yes

when we truly understand…

I’m saying still paint clouds with a kid’s wavy lines when death sniffs at the seams of your pants.

I say this after having the experience of painting clouds,

as I mop my classroom having let my 1st graders try to make their own get-well-cards even after the love and logistics risk assessment.

Jasmine made tipi’s out of oil pastels snatched from my hand, Grayson made one of those folding monster faces with teeth.

I know, with finality, how much distress Sen, my black, Michael-Jordan-loving middle-school Spanish teacher was put through, having let me be liberal with my dry humor falling all over the floor.

go to the doghouse, Daniel! she said, which meant drag my desk outside the classroom door, which meant one way of being seen.

when the inferred thermometer was played with one to many times, too much ceiling-high sarcasm from the 4th graders, when I asked the kinders to clean and received the view of them prancing through browning apples as if through olive trees, heaps of rosebushes, and jasmine and thyme.

I took the thermometer outside and spiked it on the cement. immediately, the kinders were there by the door. and we leaned on the doorframe and stared at its batteries exposed to the sun.

to live as if you were still too young to hate. I can say this after having hated. when my heart cowered from the fist that squeezed it. the mayhem and magnificence of one thousand heartbreaks.

I’ve been told some people feel gratitude every morning and every night, after losing the capacity to enjoy anything, drinking water as if it were wine.

©Daniel, 2024

Check out my poetry book “Facial Features” here:

Another poem by Daniel: