THE ZEN OF Nth GRADE SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS b y Tim J Snell

Nth grade is still there despite all the new technology like cell phones.
I'm kind of reminded of the scene in "I, Robot"
When Will Smith's character finds them all bunch together
while being stored in old box cars in a junkyard at night

All the students bunch together around their electronic devices
New rules are being reinforced every day --
But no Smartphones
Allowed in the classrooms.

At least that would be my classroom.

And now I'm trying to strike while the iron is hot
Trying to record what its like to be left in a
Room filled with Nth Graders
Who are strong enough to fight me

Over the girls and young women the claim
And sometimes I wonder who is in charge.
Does it have to be us or them?

I mean one young man in the classroom
Looked me right in the eye when I told him to sit down
And he just walked away back to the relatively quiet flock that had gathered
Around the smartphones costing hundreds of dollars each
(so I could not just throw their darn "radios" right against
The wall.

New short reminder notes in verse

LOVE DRUNK
by tim j snell

And i was wrong, as usual those days.
two starry eyed lovers intoxicated
by towering intimacies before I fell
back down in it. (Kinda like a cloud -- trent reznor)

SATURDAY MORNING HAIR CUT
by tim j snell

Because I'm hooked up to the big machine
that keeps me alive.

the big machine is Nature
On its largest scale 
Including all the far flung
Clusters of galaxies very different
From ours. All this still feeling the pulse

of creation. 

䷪😎

I will work on editing this as the weeks go by.  
I hope to make these two poems longer and more focused.

Mom in Colonial Oaks

Most recently, she has a hand sized bruise on her arm. And x-ray showed a small fracture.

She originally went to hospital after a bad fall trying to get up and go to bathroom by herself at 11 pm with all the lights in the house were off.  So she fell and an ambulance came to the house, picked her up off the floor and took her to the hospital. That was Aug 19 2019 and after the surgeries she still cannot walk on the replaced hip due to arthritis pain.  She is 86 years old.

Summer Air

Inside the windows fog over. I wonder:
Do the water droplets collect on the
Inside of the window glass or outside.

I sit and wonder this. Somewhere
Deep inside the radio speakers
Tinkles a piano.  I turn up volume
And rollick to Pepe Romero's classical guitar.

Only the noisy cicadas
Outside the foggy windows.
Inside, the smell of fresh paint
and figs rotting in the wooden bowl by the window.

Everywhere mosquitoes, ubiquitous biting bugs
And even the bottled water tastes like iodine.

A new poem from a series

I'm going to Henry's Place to cry
While I sip diet Coke in the dark
Alone in a crowd of shadows
between me and the internet
jukebox.

I like this short poem because it highlights my efforts to quit drinking beer in the dark with strangers.  I like to get out of the house and hear live music and visit with friends.  But yesterday I found myself writing this poem anyway. So there will be a series of similar rhymes rhythms, and relationships.

On fire

Click click.  :)

I am like "on fire" tonight.  Really can't sleep.  Lucky it is Saturday/Sunday.  Oh well, so much for making it to church.  I never make it to church anyway.

janlo surpreated furit compawere.

tired and not making any sense.  Not code.

Old Seinfeld episodes are sunning through my head and I am amazed that Seinfeld is in the auto spell.  I am amazed at a lot of things these days.  I am so amazed I have eyes in the back of my head and remember my past life as a cave man.

This is all just a rouse.  Afoot is the game of life
It ripples across time
Through the void

We are a node on a wave train
Bound for unknown destinations

And singing

ALP

American Life in Poetry: Column 511

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

 

Just as it was to me, Insha’Allah will be a new word to many of you, offered in this poem by Danusha Laméris, a Californian. It looks to me like one of those words that ought to get a lot of use. Insha’Allah  I don’t know when it slipped into my speech that soft word meaning, “if God wills it.” Insha’Allah I will see you next summer. The baby will come in spring, insha’Allah. Insha’Allah this year we will have enough rain. So many plans I’ve laid have unraveled easily as braids beneath my mother’s quick fingers. Every language must have a word for this. A word our grandmothers uttered under their breath as they pinned the whites, soaked in lemon, hung them to dry in the sun, or peeled potatoes, dropping the discarded skins into a bowl. Our sons will return next month, insha’Allah. Insha’Allah this war will end, soon. Insha’Allah the rice will be enough to last through winter. How lightly we learn to hold hope, as if it were an animal that could turn around and bite your hand. And still we carry it the way a mother would, carefully, from one day to the next. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher ofPoetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2014 by Danusha Laméris, from her recently released first book of poems, The Moons of August, Autumn House Press, 2014. Poem reprinted by Danusha Laméris and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.