I'm Bound

I can see you leaving me.
I can hear all those voices fading.
I can still smell your skin,
and I remember
how your neck
never tasted.
How your voice
never quite would sound.
All my senses remember you,
and to my senses,
I am bound.
______________________

Wrote this while in class with my students out in the park last week. The assignment we'd given them was to write one sentence for something they could experience with each one of their five senses. This we later wrote nicely and neatly on new sheets, and declared their texts to be poems (which of course offended them hugely, but managed to bring a few scattered embarrassed smiles among their bright little faces). Naturally, had we told them we were going to the park to write poems, they would have chained themselves to the ground and refused to leave the classroom or alternatively the corridors, but this way we made them do it. And hopefully for a small while they could all feel like they'd created something useful, something real. Being real poets for a while (even if they pretend to find all poetry cheesy beyond reason). I love doing assignments like this, it really brings out the best of them, and the best part of it is to see them smile and laugh when they finally get the gist of what we've tricked them into doing. For a while there, they admit it that we've been clever enough to fool them into actually doing something, and somehow we're respected for it.
Strange, that feeling. That we're different than their regular teachers and that we can bring out things in them that they didn't know they had in them themselves. Strange, bringing out that feeling in them that they are different. That they count. Are important. And not a waste.
Too many of these kids think they're for no good. But I've seen so much good in them. I just know they have it in them. And I want to believe it. I want to believe they're good, that we're all good, that we've got that little core inside us that can be appealed to. That can be adressed.
It makes me so angry that my students are always the ones to be blamed for everything that goes even the slightest wrong. Today the janitor gave us the crash course in how much it'd cost to clean up what some of the kids had been scribbling on the walls, and everyone just turned to me, assuming it was my kids having done it. I don't know how you feel about it, but no matter what their regular teachers tell them, they are not dumb enough to scribble down their own names all over the stairs. I'm quite convinced some of the other kids might have done it just to get my kids in trouble, they're not well liked among the others. And still they all just assume it's them that did it. Without even asking them, without asking me. I had full control over the kids for practically all day, I seriously doubt they did it while I was gone for a total of five minutes during the entire day, and while the other English teacher had them in check for me. Or what? Can they perform magic? Can they walk through walls or become invisible?
The kids I teach might be loud and they might be messed up, but they're fucking harmless. No use in blaming them for everything without at least looking into it first. This means tomorrow I gotta do the serious talk with them which I just know is gonna make them even more completely against school, against authority, against being there. Just when I'm starting to get to them, to gain their confidence, gain their trust.
Damn.
Well, anyway, about this poem. Seeing as my kids were doing their very best chasing after experiences with their five senses to write down in their books (watching the bees, swimming in the pond, etcetera), I somehow found time to catch a few fleeting sentences forming this little piece. It tells of how something wonderful and new, something bright, and able to fly, can suddenly flicker and almost fade... just because you know that somehow just the thought won't cut it.
The thoughts won't be enough.
I wish they would.
Wish you could feed off your memories, and your daydreams. Of your imagination. Of your wings, growing out your back, that you never really owned but that nevertheless, for a fragment of just a single second, made you feel like you could rise from the ground for a few inches.
Made you feel something at all.
Made you free of this despair.
The darkness.
Find the fool you used to be, and in the foolishness you used to believe.
For just a moment I'd like to keep to that feeling, stick to it, wanting to grasp it, and clutch it more tightly than ever. Just hold on to it, and believe in all those illusions.
In the dreams.
I wanna believe I can live off the idea.
And I don't wanna see it all go away with a puff of air.
Not again.
I'm too tired to die away.
Too sore in my eyes to cry these days.
I wanna believe that I can live.
For a while.