National Poetry Month - Week Three

6ABC donated charity Christmas drive that shows

“How the other side lives”

For you five minutes of feel good

Exploitation and poverty porn

What is the math we are trying to teach?

Who are the masses we are trying to reach?

Life divided by aggression

Factored in the oppression

Of your teacher’s good intentions

You’re left with no positive addition

To break the negative trend.

We need to break the formula

Re-write the pattern

So our double triple negative past

Can outlast the legacy

Written into our Holy Books

Of charity and band aids

Our youth need a chance to

Write their own math.

One where Juan and Maria walk to the store

And buy their wares,

And successfully make change.

by Claire Geruson

“Best”

All you have to do is your best

Well what if that is really hard?

What if my best hurts a lot?

What if trying my best means loving a whole group of people who are family

And that kind of a deep love really hurts

Because to open myself up to the questions of failure means letting your guard down

But what is it if not trying

Just do your best- let good enough be good enough

But good enough for whom?

I don’t ever realize that your good enough is my good enough

Because it’s never enough for my students

Especially when they’ve had enough of a system that says

Color and not character

Poverty and not power

And systematic violence over systemic change.

Enough is Enough.

by Claire Geruson