I Am Engrish Teacha!

Teaching Englishee velee haard
It does to dlive-us away the baard
Especiary when styoo-dunt says eet best
that "praying sportsu relieves my stless"

You cannot-- cannot-- make to laugh
As teacha, must to do not make them cly
You must leally help your styoo-dunt leahn
Even dough you feel like die

(Oh so solly Teacha, "Die-ying";
"Feel like dying")

The onry thingus keep you sane
When listuning Engrish cause you pain
are fact daht styoo-dunts are your fliends
and, daht "soon" is when bad rhyming ends

ESL is a priestly vocation and
you ain't alone in thinking this--
Us ESL teachers need a long vacation.

* * *

Tina

Tintin

Today, all that I am
Inexplicably keeps me bound to her.
Now I know that
Tomorrow-- all my hopes reside
In the folds of her denim jacket.
Never never let them fall!


Soma I

Biting into my I-pod
I taste the tang of
Richie Kotzen's lyrics,
the grease and honey of
his guitars help me swallow
the irony

then I look the way I feel
I'm a rock god I'm electric
writhing on the floor
a worthy Christian speaking in
angelic gibberish

and all I say is
you are the World

* * *

Dex

Women

They
march--
stride--
sashay--
rampmodelwalk
fresh off the dollhouse
conveyor belts:
semi-captive Stepford products
of a man's need
for lace, sweet next-door denim,
for black satin underneath the placid face
of a cotton smock
for nipple rings, leather and the lash
for sons, for sex, the photo-op for the joneses sake
so fitted to our molds,
is it a wonder that they cannot always find themselves?

it's a bigger mystery why i am so lost without them
without one of them
 

The Ritual of Forgetting

It starts with Fate taking me someplace by the sea.
The swaddling concatenation of events swirl 'round me
wrapping this post-Nazarene disciple of the Love-God
and sealing him gently, surely, in woven wicker stopped with pitch.  
Fate carries me to Egypt, to my personal Nile
where (it's always a variation of this theme)
a woman finds me sulking in the reeds.

Moshe, she will call me.  
My name is Tobiah, I will answer

She adopts me for the night, feeding me, dressing me
listening to me cry. Occasionally she may gingerly dip me
head-first into the white Styx of her bosom.
The salt of my tears and the salt of her skin mingle
to grant me a partial invulnerability to your barbs
(but there is always a spot the river doesn't cover
and you always find it. I always let you.)

Meantime the Death-gods prepare me for my baptism:
They teach me to write your name in the sand
They make me watch as the water washes it away
"All Love, all Life is built on This" they whisper.
"Die to her and rise reborn into someone else."

Three times fate has taken me to this river: the Nile, Styx, Lethe.  
Three times I've taken the plunge.
Three times I have refused to commit your name
to its banks

* * *

Tishie

Daughter

And if I lose you too
so goes the last link
in the chain that keeps me
tethered here.

I did not want this at first:
to tuck your downy head under my wing
because my Other has stopped
listening to my song

If you greet me with silence,
my little love,
my little dove
then off I'll go

I'll quit this concrete cage for another land
even as you and my Other chart your own
migratory paths: west, east, south or north
out of memory
 
* * *

Advice to (Some)One Pedestrian

What do you do when you miss the bus?
Get on another one.

She'll take you to the same place anyway
Though not quite in the same fashion.

the route might be the same but the stops are all different.
the new smells and the colors, all the new maps
will take some getting used to.
and in the beginning you'll never quite be comfortable
in her love-seat embrace.
But she'll take you--the way they all take you

for a ride

In her own ponderous gasoline-and-seatback-leather-sweet time