Blog 9: Students I See Every Day

This week’s poem blog comes in a form of a poem I wrote for my students to remind myself of the sacrifices they made in order to have a better life. Watching what they were going through made me want to be a better person. I don’t teach anymore, but I still admire their lives and their commitment. It is a great privilege to be a professor.

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Students who carry themselves

as if they own the world with bodies that mesmerize  You   
want to touch? Look all you want. And students who

clothe themselves in a shame that arrived the day a father
or a mother or an uncle of a brother or a neighbor or

a stranger took away an innocence they never knew
was there. Every crooked smile,  reveals the secret of

a body that they hide beneath the armor of their clothes.
They wish away a body that cannot be wished away.  

  And students who  are desperate to learn and
students who are desperate only to get a diploma. A diploma

means money. And students who have no money no money
becomes all they think about, money for tuition that is higher

and higher and so on weekends that is what they do—to get
higher and higher, and the student loans, oh yeah, the student loans,

the student loans, and the students who wear earrings. Earrings
on their tongues and brows and bellies and lips and in places

you picture in your mind. Students, completely unadorned, no
watch. No golden ring. No bracelet for a wrist. Students who

carry burdens like backpacks too many books that cost too
much and homework that takes too much time when there is no time,

no time for brothers and sisters who want you home and ask you for
what you do not have—time you do not have, and who understands?--

and mothers and fathers who are poor and need your help
to pay the latest bill and do not understand what it means

to be a student—but that is what you are. That is what you wanted
to be, a student. You sit alone. You repeat the word again and again

and again. Student. You love and hate that word. You love and
hate your education and you don’t know if you want to be that teacher

or that lawyer or that doctor or that historian, not anymore, and all
you want to do is sleep and sleep—and a car that threatens to die

every time you turn the key. And you keep seeing the face
of the cop who lectured you and wrote you out a ticket

for having no insurance. Insurance? And don’t you know,
he said, that you can lose the right to drive. Even now, you

have no right to drive on this road. And how you hated
him. How you hated, hated him. And how you wanted to scream

at him and say, "lend me the fucking money and I will buy your
fucking holy insurance." And girlfriends and boyfriends who take and give

but take and give at the worst possible times and professors who care too much
and want to know why you don't care, and professors who

don't give a damn and nobody told me it would be this way
at twenty. And students who sit reading books on a step

smoking cigarettes, and you think about what is it like to be reading
that book? What is it like for your mind to be learning.

God, you've forgotten. You try to scan the cover
of the book, searching for the author, the name

as you walk by and you think you see the name Plato
and suddenly you remember the first time you had

to explain the cave and the world of perfect 
forms. The student smiles back at you and you think,

God, young people smile at me every day. Every day
of my life. Students who want a job. Students who want

to learn. Students who make you invisible because you
are not young and will never be young again and they see

only what belongs to their world. And you, you do not
belong. Students who nod at you and call you sir and ask

polite questions because they have been taught to be kind
and to be respectful of their elders and you are about

the same age as their fathers and so they nod at you
and you think that maybe the world is not such a bad

place. Students who accuse themselves of being guilty
of all sins. Students who do not think they could possibly

be guilty of anything. Students who think that every day
is too long. Students who wish the day was longer, longer

because then they would have the time to finish everything
they have started and still have time to get that sleep

they need even more than they need that extra dollar.
And they want so much to be loved but no one has time

for love anymore, but they still dream it, dream that touch
that touch that says I matter, I matter, but right now I do not

matter and it seems like I will never matter again.
Students who think that all of this will never, ever end.