POEMS

by Renee Zepeda & Ken Mikolowski

The lime green yoga mat
beckons from the corner
but remains unused:
you're hungover.

Your thoughts swirl round me
like cinnamon in a cappucino
and I lick them off.

Do you know how much I
like those pants?
Now take them off.

I have these postcards of yours
and these postcards have postcards.

Nice beard.
But weird.

These pictures of literal fairies
are really cloying.

Youssou N'Dour
is music d'jour.

I'm up to my ears in
your muff.  Nice muff.

I painted you a picture
called le fruitbowl subversif.
It's French.

Do you see that red bird?
No, but I'll take your word for it.

There are these four blue birds
and then these four small birds
and they became four small blue birds.

I think this hat will fit well
on your c(l)ock.  It's XXL.

The Amish dolls sit together
without faces.  Do you suppose
they lost them touring Asia?

The Tibetan prayer flags fly in
red, yellow, green, white and blue.
They fly in red, yellow, green, white and blue.

I made some paper cranes for you
and you put them over your bed
and there they wink at you
each and every morning.

Unlike Degas, Cezanne liked boys.
You like me and I like boys
too.  Lots of boys.

Believe me when I sing
your song.

Caterpillar. Parachute. Papillion.
Bluebell. Leadbelly . City.

Nice face.
Would you like to sit on it?

From here I can see your
brain furniture.  What can you see?
Not much.  The couch is in the way.

Here is an image of your soul
in the form of a literal fairy.

The kitchen smells like cinnamon
like sweet cream like
a foggy Maine morning
if you know what i mean.

How to be
me.

I used to know Santa Claus.
He is really kinky now.
Nice beard though.

Excerpts from THE LISTING ATTIC by: Edward Gorey

There was a young curate whose brain
Was deranged from the use of cocaine;
   He lured a small child
   To a copse dark and wild,
Where he beat it to death with his cane.


Each night Father fills me with dread
When he sits at the foot of my bed;
   Id not mind that he speaks
   In gibbers and squeaks,
But for seventeen years he's been dead.


To his clubfooted child said Lord Stipple,
As he poured his post-prandial tipple,
   "Your mother's behaviour
   Gave pain to Our Savior
And that's why He made you a cripple."


Ce Livre est dedie a Chagrin,
Qui fit un petit mannequin:
   Sans bras et tout noir,
   Il etait affreux voir;
En effet, absolument la fin.

Poem after Howl

For Allen Ginsberg

I saw my friends’ shining faces and I wanted to be like them, wanted to shine like them in the blue house that we lived in, on Lawrence Street in Ann Arbor.

I saw my friends’ intelligence and wanted my intelligence to be as intelligent as I perceived theirs to be.

I saw my friends living like hobos, living in rooms they’d painted themselves, living despite our circumstances.

I saw my friends at dinner, smoking cigarettes, watching movies, at parties and on balconies.

I saw my friends and what I saw was partly me in my friends, partly me emulating my friends and wanting to be like them.

I saw my friends lose it—saw them weeping uncontrollably—saw how they would not be soothed.

I saw my friends at their happiest, saw their faces, ecstatic, luminous. [They were bound by nothing and at their free-est].

I saw my friends studying their asses off, going without showers, and living on toast.

I saw my friends at their most innocent, exposing themselves and all their ideas.

I saw my friends for what they were—ordinary brilliant people trying to survive in the world.

Symbolic Interpretation of Teaching as a Subversive Activity:  

 The Subversive Fruitbowl

Things to be found in le fruitbowl subversif include:

one orange (What's Worth Knowing?)
one lemon (Meaning Making)
three plums (Crap Detecting, Pursuing Relevance, Languaging)
one apricot (The Inquiry Method)

Le fruitbowl subversif is a playful way that I created to understand Chapters 5 and 6; the most prominent fruits in the painting are:  What's Worth Knowing and Meaning Making.

The caption What's Worth Knowing is adorned with two question marks because this chapter is essentially about the importance of asking questions.  The authors asked me as a reader to come up with some of my own important questions and I came up with the following:

1.  What do you want to be when you grow up?
2.  What do you resist?
3.  What do you advocate?
4.  What are some strategies humans use to survive?
5.  What's worth knowing?

After I came up with my own questions I read the authors' questions and observed that most of them were open-ended and could be answered in multiple ways.  The point of the questions was to educate students (p. 62), not merely to ask the questions for the sake of asking questions.  In this process, the authors state, the student is not a passive recipient; he becomes an active producer of knowledge (62).

The caption Meaning Making is underlined and "the minder" is in parenthesis because the authors put forth the idea in this chapter that the student is "the minder" or the unique someone who creates meaning in their own mind.  The words "Student-centered curriculum" run alongside Meaning Making because that is precisely the curriculum that the authors advocate, rather than teacher-centered or subject-centered curriculum in which the teacher or subject is the main producer of Meaning.  In student-centered curriculum the students make the meaning in their own minds; it isn't inserted into their minds by the teacher.

The quote that runs along the bottom of the fruitbowl is:  "We do not get our perceptions from the things around us.  Our perceptions come from us" (90).  This comes from the Meaning Making chapter and is part of the authors' argument that Adelbert Ames' discoveries in perception could change the schooling process (89).  It's hard to wrapt one's brain around such a statement because perceptions are abstract things.  However, I think the idea that the authors want to impart is that it's important for teachers to understand that students are already making their own meaning without it being placed in their heads by teachers.

This is not my photo, but it could have been.  I've been thinking of wintertime in Munich
because today looked like a winter wonderland in the Poconos.  The three statues
remind me of the Three Graces--Aglaea ("Beauty"), Euphrosyne ("Mirth"), and Thalia ("Good Cheer").

                             for Alice Notley                   

Movement on the                                       periphery
 
just before the clocks                    turn
I would like                        to tell you
how                  excellently            my life
 
burns.         in this country, burns.
 
                                             Colors,
little lights       of a city                 I feel in love with
in my eyes~
 
                                  glamour
of being born
                     in words
                     when time was long~
 
believe me      when I sing
this         song.

 Stephane: ¡Un, dos, tres, cuatro!
[Stéphane plays the drums, then the piano, then moves the cameras. "Stéphane TV"]

Stephane: Hi, and welcome back to another episode of "Télévision Educative". Tonight, I'll show you how dreams are prepared. People think it's a very simple and easy process but it's a bit more complicated than that. As you can see, a very delicate combination of complex ingredients is the key. First, we put in some random thoughts. And then, we add a little bit of reminiscences of the day... mixed with some memories from the past. 

--from The Science of Sleep
 

      THE WARNING

      For love—I would
      split open your head and put
      a candle in
      behind the eyes.

      Love is dead in us
      if we forget
      the virtues of an amulet
      and quick surprise.