What Workers Built

    
What Workers Built

While walking home from work today, I saw
the roads and sidewalks, elevated rails,
the houses – and the rows and rows of trees.

And all of these were silent, mute and still,
and yet it seemed they quietly spoke to me.

For as I walked, in end-of-day fatigue,
I thought of those who’d worked their days like me…

The city’s workers built those asphalt roads,
those concrete sidewalks and those iron rails –
and all the drains beneath, the workers laid.

And houses then were built, on vacant lots,
by other workers, in their many trades.

And yet more workers planted rows of trees –
so ravaged, ‘prisoned earth could yield again
its balm of grace to salve demented souls…

And those, insane, like I – and you, perhaps –
who dwell in cities, feeding off its veins,
while laboring to feed its grinding mills –
can walk these city streets, at end of day,
with gratitude – or not – to those before,
who built those things – and even planted trees,
so from our madness we could pause – and sense
there still is sanity and beauty left…

2014 May 29th, Thu. 8:21 pm
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York
   

A Teacher's Tale

       
A Teacher’s Tale
       
I’m a teacher, I’m a teacher – a teacher, that is me!
I’ve been teaching close to forty years, and still am teaching, see!
But I’m a burnt-out teacher now, and students might complain
That he, who tries to teach them, doesn’t seem to have a brain.

And how can I explain to them, oh how can I explain,
That teaching close to forty years can burn away a brain?
It seems as if a current strong was driven through my head.
Whatever little wits I had – that current burned them dead.

So I’m a burned-out teacher, oh, a brainless, addled fool!
But why then am I teaching still – in this old city school?        \1
There’s nothing else that I can do, except to teach my classes.
And so it is with teachers – as it also is with asses.

For when an ass – or mule or horse – has worked until it’s old,
There’s nothing that it’s useful for – it even can’t be sold.
For in the past, it still had use, for turning into glue,
But now that’s out, so nothing’s left, so what can “owners” do?

And some, whose hearts are kinder, they may put it out to pasture,
And wait for it to buckle and to add, to earth, its moisture.
But others, they dispose of it – in a manner rough or gentle.
And so it is for workers – be they physical or mental.

And some may say – “Retirement! That’s the way for you to go.”
What little, of a life that’s spent in teaching, do they know?
For when I’m pushed out of my job, to live on a pension meager, \2
To go where worn-out asses go, I surely will be eager.

2014  May 24th, Sat. 11:55 pm
(written after six continuous hours spent checking and entering one 
week’s worth of homework and labs – admittedly, more labs than 
usual, as my students did two extra labs this week)
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York

Notes:
 
1.   The high school in Bensonhurst in which I teach is close to a hundred years old.

2.   I started teaching, as a graduate student, in 1975 – and I taught, at universities, for many years after that.  I joined as a teacher in the New York City school system in 1987.   The pay then was low and continued to be so until soon after I took unpaid family leave for my parents at the start of the 2002 academic year.  I did day-to-day sub work often during those years on leave, in order to pay the rent.  But I was only able to rejoin full time in 2009, and have been working ever since.
 
My pension, if I retired now, would be about 30K$ (U.S.) a year, before taxes, according to the calculator at the retirement system website. And so perhaps retirement might finally be viable for me, which it wasn’t just five years ago, when that figure was about 13 K$.  It’s too bad that my earlier teaching work was not pensionable. Even if it were, it wouldn’t have helped that much, as most pensions are far from being linear functions of time – an important fact that math teachers should take the time to explain to their students – and perhaps also to their colleagues.

Apart from vital monetary considerations, it is difficult to retire if one has spent most of one’s waking hours for so many years on the teaching work.  A teacher has five classes to teach, each day during the work-week, with all of the stress that one gets from that.  If one is fortunate, one may also get some satisfaction from this, as from the other work one does after hours.
    
What is that work?  One is often busy, after hours and on weekends and holidays, preparing class handouts, homework, quizzes, exams, etc.  A science teacher may also have to prepare lab sheets, apart from having materials ready for labs, unless someone else has that last job.  As the student population, with its strengths and deficiencies, the curricula and even the subjects taught keep changing, what worked before no longer does.  So one has to keep changing things or doing them again from scratch, finding oneself, not only in in the teaching profession, but also in the authoring and printing business.
  
New subjects involve new learning, so one has to keep ahead of the students in subjects taught for the first time., which may be far removed from one's expertise.  High school classes, which nowadays usually end in state exams, are often fast-paced, so this is not easy.  All of this has to be done on the fly, after the physical, mental and emotional stress that the day-job involves.

One must also try to deal with the almost impossible correcting load.  At the high school level, this involves the daily and weekly work of often close to 170 students – and much more if one teaches labs and has to grade the lab reports. 

In many cases, various factors reduce some of these diverse workloads, but others may add to them.  I have mentioned only the things I myself have spent most time and effort on in my own work-life.  Other teachers may have other preoccupations.  And others yet might find all of this nonsensical and far removed from their own experiences.
            
But all of what I have outlined, if taken seriously,  can become all-consuming, leaving little or no time for even vital personal and family matters.  This is especially so when one has students with a great range of constantly varying deficiencies that have to be taken into account and compensated for, plus state exams that involve  curricula which cannot possibly be taught and learned properly in the time available, given the deficiencies that the students exhibit. *
   
So some of us might enter, at retirement (as experienced during periods away from the job), from all of this continuous activity and social contact, with students and colleagues, at the faux village that a school provides – some of us might enter from all of this into a vacuum, where one is faced with the four walls of one’s room.    With family and friends long dead, estranged or non-existent, when we step outside, we might find ourselves in a city full of busy strangers.  We may blame ourselves for that, but that would be little comfort.

*   In New York City, the financial squeezing and punitive "reforms" initiated by our former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and pushed by Governor Andrew Cuomo and his moneyed allies have greatly aggravated this horrible, manic predicament, for the students as well as their teachers.
    

The Gloaming

      
The Gloaming
   
So this is the time called the “gloaming”, when
The light is draining from the evening sky.
And though, before the dawn, it’s “gloaming” too,
I’ve mostly seen this at the hour of dusk.

And there’s a stillness in this twilight time,
A pause, as day is yielding place to night.
And looking at the treetops now, I see
They’re barely moving, in the faintest breeze.

And high above, the clouds are swirling, slow,
As all the sky is lit in somber grays.
But since the light is fading, all I see
Are hints of ghostly movements in that arch.

And down below – the silent, rain-washed street,
The lighted windows and the spreading gloom.
And as I walk and reach my waiting door,
It’s quiet, calm and very, very still.

In a puddle in the gutter, I can see
A window – and that gray and eerie glow.
And looking up, the greens are deepening.
The trees will soon be dark against the sky.

And while I watch, the sky is darkening too,
But slowly, making sure to take its time.
If only we would do the same, perhaps
Our twilights could be wondrous gloamings too.

But though I’ve paused to savor this awhile –
This time when time itself appears to pause,
It’s time, I realize, to climb the stairs.
There’s work that’s left that I have carried home.

2014 May 22nd, Thu., 9:47 pm
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York
 

Trouble

    
Trouble
   
I was sitting by myself today
And thinking this and that,
When thoughts that weren’t mine came by
And struck me as I sat.

And how I knew they weren’t mine
I find it hard to tell.
I  know my face, I know my voice –
I know my thoughts as well.

“It’s strange,” I thought, about my thoughts
(Which weren’t really mine),
“That I can think another’s thoughts
As an actor reads a line.”

And so I sat and thought those thoughts
That came there, floating by,
Will thinking too, about those thoughts
And how they came and why.

And what those thoughts might be (or were)
I really can’t recall,
For as they came, from nowhere, so
They vanished, one and all.

But while they stayed with me, they gave
Me cause enough to worry.
I feared perhaps I’d stolen them,
For which I might be sorry.

What would I say, if someone came,
Demanding their return?
And might I then be hauled to court,
To face a judgment stern?

“I  find you guilty, Joseph Shmoe,
Of stealing something precious!
To a kennel, I do sentence you –
With angry pit-bulls vicious!”

How many levels could there be
Of thinking about thinking?
And could a mind be drowned by this –
From such a burden, sinking?

The more I thought about the thoughts
That filled my weary head,
The more my worries grew, until
I wished that I was dead.

But then I thought, it could well be
If I, that instant, died,
To thinking about thinking, still
My mind might then be tied.

And so, for all eternity,
In a kind of thinker’s hell,
My blameless soul unjustly might,
Alas, forever dwell.

“Oh here lies he who thought some thoughts
(Not his), one sunny Monday,
And so expired, his mentem crushed
By pondus cogitandi.

“And since he still was thinking when
He left our mortal world,
To hellfire, that of thinking, he
Was then, by demons, hurled.”

This epitaph could well be mine,
Inscribed upon a stone.
For purloined thoughts, I might perhaps
In a fiery hell atone.

And were perhaps these thoughts (not mine),
A snare, by devils, set?
Oh, like a fish, I’d swallowed bait!
The hook and line, I’d get!

And thinking this, I panicked and
I bolted from my seat,
While thinking that, by doing this,
Those demons, I could cheat.

For I had heard that predators
Prefer a seated prey.
From one that swiftly moves about,
They tend to shy away.

And so I hopped about – and then
I twisted and I jerked,
While hoping, by these tactics, I’d
Get rid of thoughts that irked.

And I recalled that I had seen
A dog, beset by a flea,
Behave exactly as I did –
As mad as a man could be.

I thought, perhaps I’d better flee
The confines of my house.
It’s said that sunshine is a thing
That irks the flea and louse.

And who should then come strolling by,
As I ran out my door,
But a neighbor, who was known to spy –
And to gossip, even more.

She watched me hop and jerk and twist,
And her mouth was open wide.
I saw her hand was over it,
Her tonsils, so to hide.

“Oh walk along!” I cried to her.
“It’s just a doggone flea.
I think it came from a passing bitch,
Which you, perhaps, might be!”

I saw her  eyes then open more
And stare at me in shock.
I bolted back then, through my door,
And  loudly turned the lock.

But when I heard that solid sound,
I felt a strange elation.
For lo – those thoughts had left me for
Some other destination!

I wondered whether she, who’d stood
So still, as I was moving,
Was now the latest victim of
The demon, fiercely roving.

The pestilence had passed – perhaps
To her, who’d stood and gawked.
If so, it served her right, I thought,
Who gossip sought and hawked!

“Oh joy!” I thought, “I’ve rid myself
Of thoughts that weren’t mine.
To think my own thoughts once again –
Is truly quite divine!”

How pleasantly I pass my days,
Unburdened of that weight!
How hellish life must be for her,
Who spared me from my fate!

I sometimes feel a little twinge
Of pity – but no more
Than would that minstrel of the dark,
Our Edgar Allen Poe.

2014 May 19th Mon & 20th Tue
Brooklyn, New York
 

The City in May

     
The City in May
 
The casual wounds that men inflict
Can linger on to cause distress.
The grace that blessed the trees has been
Replaced by stunted awkwardness.

The rain, it seems, cannot succeed
In washing grime away from trees.
And even newborn leaves of spring
Are listless, waiting for a breeze.

The beauty, from the streets, is fled
And all that’s left is ugliness.
The elegance is gone – and what
Remains is mostly tawdriness.

******

The sky is robbed of mystery,
The earth is drained of life.
And all that’s left is misery
And dull, unending strife.

In markets, crabs and fishes die
Their slow and tortured deaths.
The frogs and turtles sadly wait,
Till scooped with tongs or nets.

The humans go to work and back.
They’re rushing all the while.
And rarely will you see them pause
To dawdle or to smile.

******

But in Manhattan, devotees
Assemble still, where Mammon stands,
And though His worship now is wired,
The God of Money understands.

He understands, He understands.
He sucks from us what’s left of soul.
And more of wires and waves will weave
The shroud of pain that cloaks the whole.

But there is still, for those with time,
The near and yet-so-distant sea.
When summer comes, I’ll slowly walk
And by those sounding waves, I’ll be.

2014 May 18th, Sun., 11:46 am
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York
 

Reflections -- II

          
Reflections – II
    
There is a current deep that we can sense.
We cannot speak about it with our words.
But with that current, we can mutely flow –
Or lose our sense of it and loudly splash.

The one surrendering to the water feels
That fluid lift her surely up again.
But he, who seeks to raise himself above
The surface, finds his struggle is in vain.

We all have fights we cannot, should not shirk,
Unless we choose to still our consciences.
And each of us must fend for selves and those
Who may depend on us to live and breathe.

But there are conflicts which we make ourselves
And which we then inflict on others ‘round.
Ambition, pride, our selfishness and greed,
Our misperceptions – make this turbulence.

So let us yield our petty jealousies,
Our envies, our ambitions small and great.
And let us breathe, resolve to do what’s right
And turn, from darkness, gently back towards light.
  
Our sight is clouded and our hearing dulled.
We cannot feel, with skin or heart – or think.
Our reason and our wisdom, we have lost.
And why is it that we have lost these things?

The demons that afflict this world abound.
They prey on us and so we do not see.
Our child is ailing or our mother's ill,
But we are sightless or are deafened still.

What form of madness may afflict us each,
We only know for sure when it has passed,
And some of us may never know or care.
So drunkards do their damage – and forget.

There’s fear that drives us into little hells.
We wonder how we can escape from this.
We feel we cannot change the world ourselves.
Yet each can breathe – and then can gently try.

There’s much that three can do that one cannot.
But there’s a concord needed, so that three
May find that common purpose. This can be,
When each is open and is listening.

A trust betrayed can rarely be regained.
And so, we should be careful in our deeds.
For how can there be confluence, when distrust
Has built the barriers needed for defense?

A vessel, filled with water, makes, when thumped,
A softer sound than one that’s partly full.
And much of noise and violence abates,
When all have drunk enough to fill their souls.

And here, we’re speaking, not of alcohol
And other things that have their merits yet
Have also faults that plague imbibers, but
Of essence – joy and deepest suffering.

But when we’re emptied by an ebbing tide,
Then thoughts arise, like sounds within our head,
And we attempt to fill ourselves again,
With silent essence – or with nonsense loud.

So all the verses that I write arise
From discontent and from that loneliness,
To which our disconnection leads our selves,
Those fictions that can gain in strength from strife.

What’s self, what’s not, is fixed by such a line
As is imagined, yet does not exist.
It dissipates to porous nothingness,
Whenever we examine it up close.

We’re made of this and that, in interflows.
And our perception, of ourselves and things
As separate from all around and what
Was there before or will be there, is false.

But who, except the sainted, yields the self,
That last illusion, stronger than the rest,
Whose shattering or dissolution comes
As pain or joy, as torture or relief?

So beings such as you and I arise
As do the nations – and we struggle, fight
When self is threatened, fortifying self –
And so are doomed to our imprisonments.

The humbled, stripped of wisdom too, may seek
To gain their stature back and then take pride
In stupid things – and so are fooled again.
Within an emperor?  A troubled child.

How often have the tantrums of the "great"
Or all their shrewdness caused the rest such grief
That men and women, lifting arms to skies,
Have sought, from infants such, deliverance?

But there are things in which we may take pride,
But quietly – no need, that others know...
Our wee successes give us nourishment,
And so we live on satisfactions small.

When some achievement, in the human sphere,
Gives confidence and strength to us again,
We should remember then our losses past
And so regain our precious humbleness.

Some things we all may know, some other things
A few of us discern. But then there are
The things that men and ants may never ken.
And those could be the most of all there is.

So if we're like the whorls an oar may make,
We're born in pairs and dissipate with time.
But who and where our whirling twin may be,
We do not know.  We turn until we fade.

But we could also be like summer storms
That rise and rage and then are swiftly gone.
They leave behind the wreckage of the trees
As well as blessings that give life again.

What ruin have we wrought – or blessing brought?
We do not know, we live and do and die.
And all our work appears as ashes, yet
From ashes rise the firebirds once again.

Ah, love – that blessing that the heart that sees
Confers on what is sighted – what compares
With you, except that wonder that we feel
On watching, being – as the dance proceeds?

This world, of wonders and of horrors mixed,
Of loves and hatreds – who has sense enough
To know its purpose – or has wisdom still
To live a life, whose damage is the least?

Oh let us breathe once more of this, the air
That others past have breathed, that yet remained
As fresh as when the ancients breathed of it,
Until we fouled it with our devil-mills.

And let us drink of that, which others drank,
Which yet remained as pure as it was then,
Until we poured, within those waters clear,
Those effluents that now have poisoned it.

And let us softly walk upon this earth,
On which so many past have walked, which yet
Remained as fertile, till we made that earth
Ingest the toxins that our mills emit.

And let’s resolve that when we leave there’s naught
We leave behind to let another know
That we were here, except a whispering,
A fragrance or a glimmer in the dust...

The foolish seek achievement and create
The horrors that have made, of life, a hell.
The wiser seek effacement, as they work
To heal the wounds ambition always wreaks.

Who seems, to most of us, to be a fool,
Could well be wiser than we'll ever be.
And he, or she, who's worshiped now as wise,
May do, in hubris, what no fool has dared.

When all around are rushing, slow a bit.
The sun and moon appear to take their time.
The seasons take their turns, the babies grow
With all our nurturing – and then they age.

This was – and is – and will forever be.
Within this dance, we move in rhythm, rhyme
That yet allow for breaks and runs and twists.
The moment is – in which we all are free.

2014 May 17th, Sat.
Brooklyn, New York
 

For What?

    
For What?
   
We aren’t. Then we are. And then we aren’t anymore.
It seems we come from nothing, live – and then, to nothing, go.
But who has strength to face this or the wit to understand it?
For all we learn, from other things, implies, “It isn’t so.”

Could something come from nothingness and vanish back to that?
“That’s magic,” you would say, “like pulling rabbits from a hat.”
And if I said it’s real, that there’s nothing up the sleeve,
The men in white might come for me and want to have a chat.

So many myths that humankind has conjured, to assure
The certainty of that which can’t be ever known for sure…
Sobriety, sobriety, it’s time for you to show
That all our gods in heavens are but treasured fictions pure…

We come from darkness into light.  To darkness, we return.
We come from silence, hear – and then, there’s silence, as we burn.
From sense-less state to sensing state, and senselessly, at end,
There’s nothing left of us, except the ashes in the urn…

But which of us will bear this and not call out to say, “No!
There was more to us than ashes, so there's still a remnant more.”
And who will hear our calling out and who will understand it?
For though it seems so senseless, there’ll be nothing left to show.

Posterity, posterity, that follows our behinds,
We leave for you the imprints of our bodies and our minds,
As children or as images, as things or streams of words.
And each of these, you will devour and only leave the rinds…

We weren’t, then we were and then we won’t be yet again.
And so it is with octopi and so it is with men.
The seasons, they return – as does the day that follows night.
And some say that we do return – for what, they do not ken.
  
2014 May 14th, Wed.
Brooklyn, New York