Love is Less than 3

"She'd teach me how to fly, even cushion my fall
If my engines ever stall, and I plummet from the sky
But she would keep me high, and if I ever die
She would commission my image on her bosom, to him
Or maybe she'd retire as well
A match made in Heaven set the fires in Hell" -- Lupe Fiasco

The entire verse was impeccable; it was hard to select which part I wanted to quote.

Everything skips a generation in my family. I'm the mirror image of my grandmothers when they were young, except in 2009 U.S. America. Having never smoked a day in my life, I have coughing spells like my dad's mother. Endless coughing spells that keep me and likely my neighbors up at all hours of the night. Like an ebb and flow, the coughing season peaks once a year, and during the rest of the year-- I'm consisting clearing my throat, a habit that if broken would cause me great anxiety. The cough medicine isn't sitting well. But I suppose I'm lucky, I've rarely been sick over my lifetime, have never had the flu and colds are quite rare, no mono or other things kids always catch, never broken a single bone even, blood pressure last I checked was 98/65... quite low.

We could get into the similarities in men between my grandmothers and I too, but I'll skip that. I'm hardheaded like my grandmother. I like to get my point across and sound relatively eloquent, if not at least articulate doing so. And I don't like being cut off which makes class discussions troubling, as my mind doesn't always act how I wish it would act, and I end up rambling wondering where my end-stopped periods are, where the word I'm searching for is, where the "umm" suddenly came from. Self-Consciousness is kicking at my side, and I'm wondering, always persistently asking others if I've made my point. I can already picture myself being one of THOSE endlessly nagging parents. But the professor wanted to move onto another point and so we did, I am frustrated, annoyed at his lack of patience.

I have 10 pages or ~2500 words to write tomorrow on Teach for America. And like everything else recently, the research has led back to how or if TFA is helping poor, colored minorities in America. In some ways it is, in other ways, not so much... and again even in a program with so much promise, it hasn't lived up to its dream. What to think... what to think. I'm at a point where I'm always wishing people would notice, would listen, but the conversations are too difficult and no one wants to admit to privilege, to money, to their roles, to being burdened by guilt because they too, feel that they work hard, and they do, they do, they do... and so the conversation is hard and I don't like to hear that those marginalized are partially responsible for being marginalized-- it is always phrased in a very nice, polite Colby way, and they mean no harm by it, they're good kids. So we talk instead about boy drama.

But sometimes I do want to scream, the Cambodian boys are dying in Maine just as they were in Cambodia-- dying as in they have no voice-- their opinions don't matter and they're not given human value here, the Spanish kids are dropping out tooo much, and let's address the African American boys, shall we-- we are not over this issue, not how they dress, but really... let's address how to take some away from prison and bring them here to Colby, where they can no doubt articulate themselves better than me.

But I don't scream. I am very relaxed about it until my opinion is asked and then I give a brief overview to the public. That is that, the issue is old, tired... and I feel stepped on. If I were a white boy who grew up with books and parents who spoke in perfect English sentences, this would not happen. If I could stare people in the face while speaking to them without first gathering my thoughts in an effort to make at least some sense but causing me to not be able to exude the kind of confident aura the white boy has, this would not happen-- I would not feel stepped on, cut short. Lack of sentimentality, a need to please, awkward aggression, it all has a root. Those who know me know I can be relatively quiet, but I don't take being silenced well-- not at all, I become frustrated, I may take another stab at empathy, but if the bubbling frustration grows-- then the person/ people causing the frustration, oblivious to their inconsideration, unable to talk on a face to face level, will be left at the wayside just as, no doubt, they were hoping to be.

Just like my grandmothers, my patience is selective.

Unfaithful... by now the poems together should be telling some kind of revealing conundrum.
----
UNFAITHFUL

My body is a contour, a casing.
It is left hollow for protruding—pleasure.
My innards harbor appeasement
inducing tingling tremors
hallucinations of how your bones
strike my bones—you feasting on perspiration
which wake up bed-springs
and conjure feelings
My body is a barren—
tampering with your temple leading you straight
to heaven- believing
my body is decadent
while my temple is conniving
traveling to his sanctuary
for love is <3
and you’ve been left out
My body is a carcass.