Bad Education

i am awake to greet morning while i pick through poets to find your kindred,

i am here to nudge the sleepy creation waiting in your hands,

sinewy and lined with history textbooks but kids don’t respect that and your palms are veined in vandalism.

shake me up vigorously until the beat in my chest rattles against the aluminum and awakens something in you,

something that looks me straight in the face at the breakfast table and smiles in simple ecstasy,

something that can trace the edges of the partition lines and un-separate the separate.

we are awake in the night finding detailed secrets to the mannerisms of space, hedging along the borders of the mattress because it is too warm to press up against you tonight.

If I keep to me and you keep to you maybe the space in the middle will collect the dust particles of questioning hidden behind your teeth,

and in the clatter of the conflict we can find a middle ground that’s not so circumstantial, a piece of peace that will have you on your knees begging the forgiveness of the sun gods.

In the space of night and dawn there is a desperation for some epiphany to leak out of the grayest early morning skies to greet you,

Hi hello I am the answer morning sends you,

when clouds part and all the pieces fall together just like in the movies when your world lights up because you finally get it.

but just like the night before we can roll towards the middle and diminish the space that heat and secrets slyly push between us,

ecstatic to curl into your safety again I am almost quick to forget that I have been on a voyage, last night and the night before and the night before last, searching seawater for meaning,

salty drops sprinkled on your skin as if I didn’t ever know about all the unsure waiting to plague me at the front door.

We hedge to the edges of bed to avoid the terrifying truth that there is no truth, no justice, no rhyme or reason as to why you are the pigmented paints i smear across the walls, hiding the white to hide the scary simplicity.

What if we’re just you and me, with no sacred truth to keep us sanctified in the glory of complexity or art,

and all you are left with is a ringing echo of what quiet sounds like after the train passes