People ask me all the time what my major is, what I’m going to do with my degree, as if that somehow defines me, somehow is a mold into which I should fit. As if being a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, a mechanic, or a nurse makes me real; as if calling myself a statistician, a technician, a psychiatrist, an ophthalmologist, a zoologist, a gynecologist, an herbologist is any more definitive than calling me by name. Because somehow the letters AA, BA, MFA, LDS, EE, DD, or PHD are supposed to make me who I am.

I cannot be defined by the classes I took or the papers I wrote or the tests I failed. I am far more complex than that and I refuse to be satisfied with a label, so when you ask me what I’m doing in school, what I’m going to do afterward, and I tell you I’m gonna teach home economics, don’t look at me like I’ve gone off the deep end, like I’m wasting my brains and wasting my time and wasting my money, like I’m negating every feminist victory and reinforcing female stereotypes. Don’t look at me like I’m never gonna make a living, never gonna make anything of myself, because it’s my brains and my time and my money, my living and my self.

And how else can I be, how else can I fit my definition if I give in to the pressures of you, the pressures of him, the pressures of them, the pressures of it, and do what someone else thinks is right for me because they want me to be defined by what I do instead of who I am. I am a girl who snores when she’s sick and hiccups after she eats. I’m the girl who dated your youngest son and had a crush on your older brother. I’m the wild woman in love with her mountain man. I’m the girl that is sometimes eloquent and often awkward and twice as likely to hug you as shake your hand. I am the adult who eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a tall glass of ice cold milk and the Floridian, who if offered a slice of pea-can pie would say “Don’t you mean pe-cahn?”

I’m the girl who loves to cook and cooks to love, and if you don’t know what I mean by that think of how a homemade meal makes you feel and then get back to me. Sometimes I’m the girl who crochets and is learning to knit, but I don’t know if I like it yet. I am a victim of the techie generation and I am helplessly addicted to facebook and youtube and myspace and stumble and twitter and flicker and all of that stupid stuff. I am a ****** who loves movies and has to get there early because it’s just not the same if I miss the previews and I’m the girl who loves to eat but hates to exercise and always complains about her flab.

I am the daughter of a sweet southern woman and a hard working ex-Marine and I am the sister to the brother who is almost taller than me and the granddaughter of the four most amazing grandparents you will ever have the chance to meet. I’m a family and consumer science major who loves biology and algebra and is fascinated with the manipulation of words and sometimes sings a song or two and used to play the flute and is practicing piano. I’m the girl who works in the weight room and turns on the light when you come to play racquetball in court number three and mops up those scuffs you left because you didn’t wear non-marking shoes. I’m the neighbor at your apartment who’s always sewing late at night and parks her car in your space.  

I’m a best friend, a sister from another mother, a daughter, a niece but not a nephew, one day an aunt, a roommate, a one-time lover, a student, sometimes a teacher, a cousin, an employee, a visitor, a customer, a someday-degreed-and-lettered member of society, but before that, during that, and after that, I am Jennifer Marie Cassell.

There was once a juxtaposition of a silent mathematician,
hand in hand with a melody called fiction.
Fighting to be free, yet fleeing from fruition.
Unure in his conditionm, he is guided by her transition.

      This was never going to work.

Fiction's as ignorant as his judgement was missing.
She was vexed by his logic, and his rate of attrition.
Suddenly she see's him far from volition,
Whilst he hears something new - designing definition.

     The record plays softly

Finally he understands to feel free from inquizition,
is about more than just logic. It's about his ambition
He returns from his audition
Dressed well with suspicion

     Blood on his hands - the endeavour of reason.

Now filled with guilt, this once honourable statistician,
is dynamic and pretentious, it's impossible to miss him.
Because through a bad combination of radio emission,
sounds a shriek from the crowd's world's worst composition.

Left Brain

I am not a scientific test or analysis, a mathematician
or an algorithm. I am not a linear graph or a statistician.
I am the reason that you can colour inside the lines,
why you don't fall off your bicycle anymore and never forgot
how to ride it. I am the force behind your smiles-
eighteen different smiles. The reason you can hold a book
or ball and learn what to do when it's in your hands.
I take credit when you remember the name of your childhood
babysitter. Thanks to me, you can play with jigsaw puzzles
or cards or checkers or dominoes. And thank me too
for your vocabulary. You don't necessarily remember
just how it is you came to remember sequences like getting dressed
or driving, decoding or analysing. I am the reason
you can probably look at someone and learn their name.
I suppose you could complain about how I dictate your days.
How you get up, go to sleep, lend you the seconds and minutes
and hours and months and years. I am the one who taught you
time. I'm also there for you to know that it runs out.

Right side**

I am no dancer or artist made for television. Instead,
I'm the vibration you feel in the tips of your fingers
when  you make a toast and ***** your wineglasses.
Those eighteen smiles you can smile? I gave you the gift
of being able to count your crayons while you are smiling.
But it's more than box sets of crayons and toasts.
I am the reason you want to be. Everything you yearn for-
every penny you ever tossed into a fountain, every star
you have wished on, and every eyelash. I am the reason
why you prefer wearing blue to green, and why you may
fill a blank page with words for what you want, how you feel.
I am the excitement that waits for you at Christmas
or reunions. When you saw the sky full of stars, felt snow
or went in the sea for the first time, I gave you that gasp.
I am your eyes on the world. Blame me for your wanderlust.
I am not time. I am how you know sometimes
that there is no way you'll ever have enough of it.

So I got caught up in life like so many other stiffs.
So I work two jobs. So I'm
twenty-three. Halfway dead, quarter-way dead -
Percentages and figures surmised by a
fictional statistician in some far off laboratory
wearing a handsome tweed sweater
despite the heat, helping to contain his
paunch.

So doctors have told me beer will **** me.
So they advise that I not indulge in any illegal
substances. We do not debate the validity of law. The
role of fear in today's culture. Hysteria. So I'm on antidepressants.
So I'm a candidate for pharmaceuticals. So I drink when
I can, which is just about every day. So I had a problem in
the past, so I spent a month locked away. So I'm not taking
a class. So I'm just about white. So I share a room with Phil
and a house with five other young men. So I had *** with
a girl I pretty much just met. So my drugs are right next to my bed.
So my *****'s *****. So I'm a brother and a son.

So I'm my own man.

Crooked teeth and definitions
I find you in secure conditions
Releasing all my inhibitions
Each encounter, like new auditions
Sleeping with the apprentice of my clinician
He was my latest edition
His voice like a musician's
and mine like a statistician's
I spoke in black and white compositions
with timed intermissions
and subtle transitions
that flowed through suppressed suspicions
stemming from little competitions
A heart like a mathematician's
and a mind, selfish, like a politician's
the Apprentice and the Clinician
fell in love with repetition.

The World lays its exaggerated, broken illusions of who I'm supposed to be
on the weary waves of my brain. I find myself torn between
my superfluous existence and the struggle of a mind craving tranquility.

The World lifted the veil and I can see the nightmare
of what we subjectively define as reality being poured into glasses,
we drink it to quench our thirst, polluting the magnanimous beauty
of our holy souls.

The World whispers its ***** secrets into me,
I no longer see what I want to see,
instead I float with the current, swept with the rest of similarly confused souls,
ready to merge into the sea of Self Loathing and Misery.

The World no longer paints my dreams in colours, they are no longer relevant,
everything is black and white just to further spite my confusion.
Dichotomy is the only answer
to the myriad of questions flooding my curiosity.

The World tells me I'm worthless and I am.
I accept your gentle embrace,
I revel in my own meaninglessness, a nobody screaming to no one.
I will never amount to anything and my life is no more
than a grain of sand in your vast desert.

The World tells me I no longer matter, I don't.
My gray matter is only a chunk of rotting flesh waiting
to be embraced by your mercy, death.
Even these abstract ideas, thrown around in filigree don't matter,
after all they only perpetuate the illusion of me.

The World I am no longer myself and I believe it.
I am the product of your words, the spitting image of your broken physique,
whenever I look in the mirror I see you.
None of these thoughts are mine, they're all yours, beaten into me
over a century, thousands of years  of evolution and here I stand
complete in your image.

The World tells me to get perspective so I do.
I see myself as a caricature, hunched over these blank pages
pretending I know what I'm writing about.
A heavy sigh leaves my body and  I can't help but laugh at my own ridiculous, petty  self.
I take a step further back and I watch myself watching myself,
One idiot looking at the first one, laughing. I turn my head and there is an infinity
of 'myself'', all of them cracking up.
It's pathetic because I am the one
drowning in my own mediocrity
while I find myself laughing to infinity.
Perspective my ***.

Hey World, I'm writing this super poem for you.

I'm writing this super poem with my life, everyday when I go to work
and 'pick' my dreams away.

I'm writing this super poem with an exaggerated sense of importance
because you are all so important to me.

I'm writing this super poem with super ink and super time because
clearly, absolutely, surely, convincingly I spend every nano second
worshiping your infinite grace and surreal qualities.

I'm writing this poem with super confusion because the fusion
of your muse with my poetics can only scramble together
stubs of rhyme and rhythm, repetition comes naturally
when you teach me that empathy means sympathy for the Machine.

I'm writing this super poem to praise your ultimate super creation, the Machine.


Machine, whose arms are molded to lovingly wrap themselves around me.
The right arm, religion and school strips me bare until I'm left servient,
ready to praise the left one, politics and consumerism.

Machine, whose eyes are never closed, gaze into the vastness of our beings
and swallow the forests of our souls. They are always on the look for more,
always vigilant and never ever ever satisfied.

Machine, whose arteries are the railroads, roads,
infested with locomotives, cars speeding towards their own meaningless end,
blowing and honking their horns
for they can't see through the thick veil of oozing smog.

Machine, whose veins are the internet, complex networks of web
trapping millions of disillusioned shards as they desperately try
to define their own humanity.

Machine, whose brain is capital. The almighty dollar, euro, pound, yen, ruble,
all rushing towards banks to ****, sweat, ***, ******,
birthing interest, famine, debt and helplessness.

Machine, whose soul is war, greedily consuming lives
to satisfy the eyes, arteries, veins and  the brain.
It's all in vain when death becomes a statistician, tragedy is numbed by the number
and the never ending slumber continues.

Machine, whose everything became my everything,
I can only find myself at ease when I please
with the entirety of my being.


I'm writing this super poem under the shades of a beat generation
because I find it resonates well with my vibrations
and I'm crawling, crawling, crawling towards your acceptance,
clawing, clawing, clawing through everything I am.

Hey World, I'm writing this super poem because I am tired,
beaten, broken by the endless charades you create
while I try to melt into the Sun.

a first
family has
never ending
wilt this
statistician's score
and old
yeller on
top of
the scene
there with
his bullhorn
only there
to shout
as his
tweets mount
across the
inteenet dial

She's a scientist
She don't look back

She's really a 🍕 gourmand,
but genetically,
Gourmet is where she's at

She loves being a statistician,
Calories count per pizza slice
(scientifically, toppings atoms don't matter)

A-good theorem excites,
Especially epically, when she
disproves it in tour face

Knows a lot of big words,
That nobody else understood 
 (but flaunting feels good)

She's an artist,
And a poet, always looking forward
(chasing sunrises)

She gets overloaded with advice,
So knows how, to give it back
(but only tidbit sized)

She knows the world is flat,
When running, she really likes that!

unlike me,
i'll quit when
out of stuff,
but a woman,
well. that's-he, be,
something else

He is to the Father
As sunlight is to the sun
The Light
Which enlightens everyone
He is the risen Son
With unlimited candle power
So be ready, He comes
At we know not what hour
Of books He wrote none
He wrote in the dirt, but we know not what of
But He hasn’t left us invictus
He has illumined the convicted
God will save with few or many
Through the narrow gate
Some will be granted entry
To the estate
Now few or many are not enumerated
He’s not a mathematician (not here)
Love and grace are not gradated
He’s not a statistician (not here)
From the first Adam to the penultimate Adam
We’re all stained with sin
But because of The Last Adam
We get to win

Copyright 2022

You look at me so mysteriously
As if there is some substance in my soul
I am scared because I know I am so flawed
I laugh it away to distract and repulse your wonder

You sound so calm, as in early morning gentle rain
And your smell travels faster than the wet soil
I roll my fingers in your grains, in your grass
"What a beauty", so unattainable, I close my eyes

You too, are like a statistician, waiting for the final significance
I feel some unsaid words, like the birds sensing a storm
Where do we go from here?
What if we die just looking at each other?

I let pride
Cloud my judgment
Of you
Safest space
I could place
My delusions
Delay
Decay’s pace,
Decades pass
We react
Like it’s all white and black
And the toll it exacts
Statistician’s
Poll tax
Is the mission
The merchant of death’s
Righteous path
So make safe in the shadows
And count out the facts
Or the gallows
Will bring back
The odds
Ever favor
The gods
As they savor
The fruits of our labor

Donald Trump never ever
Likes to be outdone.
Now he's teaching a brand new course:
Autocracy 101.
Trumplicans are fine with that;
Most of them don't care.
They'll bend over with utmost glee
To kiss his derrière.

Instead of working with current laws,
Trumplicans have a solution:
Let Trump do what he wants to AND
Ignore the Constitution.
We can see where their fealty lies;
It's NOT with the law of the land.
It's with their ruler who wants them all
To bow to his every command.

When Trump does NOT like test results,
He fires his physician.
When numbers aren't what he expects,
He fires the statistician.
When he's involved in scandals and doesn't
Like the people's reactions,
He diverts attention with
Conspiracy-based distractions.

If he thinks he is losing votes
And doesn't like the projections,
He'll encourage some of the states
To rig our future elections.
If he objects to certain decisions--
And we know he holds grudges--
He will blast the lawyers and also
Try to remove the judges.

When interviewed, he knows that there
Are people to pacify,
So he has no compunction about
Telling a whopping lie.
Since he can't take criticism,
Companies get two choices:
Settle in court for millions of dollars,
Or stifle critics' voices.

Surrounding him, Trump must have
His loyalists who fear
That they'll be fired if they don't tell him
What he wants to hear.
The truth becomes irrelevant;
"Facts" become invented.
A sentence we hear frequently
Is "That's unprecedented!"

And while he's bringing the country down,
His mind is growing dim.
If he continues to get his way,
Our future will look quite grim.
I always used to enjoy attending
Classes that were fun,
But NOT the one that Trump is giving:
Autocracy 101.

-by Bob B (8-4-25)