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

National Poetry Month - Struggles

Struggles

Jesus said to me

A million times,

“Serve the poor.”

So we stood in that conveyor line

Shoveling out taco meat

To a man who handed over his plate and a God bless.

And it was the sweetest prayer I ever got.

And a million times Jesus said to me,

“Give a voice to those who have none.”

So we marched.

We marched our battle song.

And when our mouths didn’t know the words

Our feet pounded them into that black cement.

And it was the best tired I’ve ever known.

Then one day Jesus said to me,

“Show love to your enemies.”

Yo.

Now hold up Jesus.

Lord knows I’ll never tell you no.

But this one’s gonna take a while.

by Maggie Myers 

National Poetry Month - Potter St.

Potter St.

It is better to get kisses and hugs

but a long time ago she lost her soul to drugs.

Now she sits on my stoop, shootin up

as if she’s never even heard of good luck.

Fuck.

‘Cause I’m a silly white girl who just moved in

and I can’t even pretend to know where to begin.

So I drag my feet up the road

praying it’ll take a thousand years to get home

—and maybe by then she’ll have moved on.

No,

with each step that needle goes in, in, in

aahhhhh

“Excuse me…”

“Sorry.”

She walks away.

I close my eyes and pray, “God-damn!”

            As I kick another syringe off our steps.

by Maggie Myers