Teaching
isn't some textbook profession
limited to the daily grind
of grading papers and curriculum cages.
It's taking the layers,
human,
social,
historic,
and showing more than savvy sediment;
this is the earth.
I spend my days
tightroping
that space some call work
and engage in more than conversations.
These moments
drop cubicle walls
and assume the comfort of a class.
We are both teacher and student,
learned and learning,
exchanging ideas
to gain a greater understanding,
but I never wanted to be a traditional teacher.
I hated the limitation,
the white space
where I'm supposed to teach
the beauty of humanism.
Like we all can fit in one book
over several months,
and we are to be okay?
I ran,
like hell,
away from the choke hold
that lied to me,
history pages shrinking me to paragraphs
rather than the me sized
coloring pages on my floor.
I had the negro encyclopedia on my shelf,
gold embossed beauties
read as Roots did it's annual run.
There was no "imitation of life".
I was black.
But, I was post-racial,
multicultural,
and assumptive
that infrastructures
crumbled as fast as Cornel West wrote books.
I believed that my progressiveness
was reflective
and that the lies of tokenism
no longer applied;
I was wrong.
My living is to teach,
to be an example,
to stop in the moment,
insuring inclusion
is the main course
in the cafeteria and not
some day old jello
served up for dessert.
I am not a side dish
or the novel you read, shelved and forgot.
My presence, a recipe
my life, a cookbook
My absence iced tea
no mint and
no honey.
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