Scholastic Carcinogens

The collection begins in high school, but ends somewhere else in life. We begin with this: “Experiences as a Substitute Teacher. Public high school of higher education but never higher than God. Sitting there, the pedagogue without authority real. Never seeking the real authority. Taking attendance. Giving assignments. Sitting there. Looking up at the ceiling, Sitting there. Students sit. Ignore. Time goes. Sitting there, students. Past and present. Sitting there. Writing the poems of the displaced, poems of: The tired, The bored, The alienated, The dysfunctional. Alienated.” Another excerpt: “Barbed wire. Invention of meticulous quality superimposed upon placid fallacies that move the human spirit toward predestination theocracy. Barbed wire. Invented for? Cows out there in the pasture. Sheep. God. Humans. Barbed wire. Invented why? To keep out. To push out. To prevent. Barbed wire to have and to hold. Holding in ideas and various manifestations of grandeur. Barbed. Painful. Hurtful.”