My eyes
Are the warm blue-grey of
The moments just before
My beloved Wisconsin sunrise
My veins, just below scared skin
Burn for a breeze
And a day that doesn't feel
Like an old painful memory.
I want to be on my motorcycle.
I want the hazardous road unraveling
Right behind me
Away from that sunrise
Away from the people
Written in my scars.

Red lipstick marks his orange shirt collar
and from his hand dangles
the dying embers of his second-to-last cigarette.

He is leaning
on that windowsill,
that transparent, locked door,
that windscreen,
which protects that world from him
and him
from the world. But in this room,
this box-like, world-like room,
is me.

You speak for us
about us
not to us
without listening to
us
so you don’t speak
for yourselves anymore
why would you?
others should

What happened to
scratching out
your own pattern
in the cave walls and
making your own wings?

Why have you forgotten
that you have wings
and that you can
be weightless
if only for seconds?

You only teach us
about results and test scores
if it’s forgotten tomorrow
well, I increased
the average score for you
they’ll give me a diploma
so I can show everyone
that I was able to
remember what I was told
without questioning
because you’re always right

You forgot
so you don’t teach us
that we can sow
our own seeds
in our own way
and **** our own plants
and after some time
maybe see one grow

Let us fight our own fight
and choose our own weapons
not your medieval ones
they’re useless against the
enemies we face

Let us sing
without being given
sheets and lyrics
that have nothing to do
with us
there’s a song in us too

Let us write
what we know
what we feel
what we learned
not from teachers
but from the smell of fog
from the rays of sunlight
shining through a prism
from water making our
hair seem weightless

Let us speak
without being spoken to
without a manuscript
that’s not from our hearts

Then you can be
proud of us
really, truly proud
and that’s nothing like
empty smiles and
black and white diplomas