We've Already Seen Where the Red Brick Goes
I am a hanging scarecrow next to the yellow brick road.
All good intentions and thunderstruck, twiddling thumbs.
I want so desperately to keep that pen in your hand,
force fairy tales from your tongues,
but coercion does not produce inspiration.
You will forget this once the term is done,
but my nightmares will linger on.
Terror that I did not teach enough.
Fear you will reach again for a gun
instead of a book by Keats or Baum or Whitman.
A remote will replace your paper,
advertisements instead of thoughts.
That you will turn off what I have so wildly been trying to turn on.
I am a tin man dancing, clunking, rigid in front of you.
Putting golden bricks beneath your boots, asking you to pick them up
and lay down a different path.
We've already seen where the red brick goes.
I know where my heart is on this silver suited sleeve.
(I would twirl and pirouette like a fool to keep your focus.)
Make you listen; make you believe.
Be an oil for these rusty, hopeful hinges.
Our world can be navigated, can be changed.
No need to fear the wizard or witches, east and west,
because we outnumber them all.
I want you to roar with me; I need you to get angry.
Lions aren't bashful. Drop your tail and fluff your manes.
When you forget yourselves and play,
songs and ballads and essays and delicious, pernicious words
string along behind you like paper lanterns. Lighting up just enough
to chase away the dark.
Brick built roads glitter before you,
made in the belief of something better than what you've been given,
more beautiful than south side red,
something to yank us all from silver screens into technicolor possibility.
I am a tornado. My anger and fatigue is a whirlwind each morning.
Coffee in one hand, hope in the other.
Searching your faces, looking for eyes that mirror my hunger.
Wanting you to wake from your dream and be the change we need
in this dying place.
The color is draining away.
We march along to a drummer behind the curtain.
The water is rising.
Peddled sweets and force fed distractions,
none the wiser and deaf to our own sounds of choking.
I need you to wake.
I need you to wake.
When others see me hanging, a scarecrow by the road, I say
Don't you dare tell me not to care. This is why we're here.
All good intentions and thunderstruck, twiddling thumbs.
I want so desperately to keep that pen in your hand,
force fairy tales from your tongues,
but coercion does not produce inspiration.
You will forget this once the term is done,
but my nightmares will linger on.
Terror that I did not teach enough.
Fear you will reach again for a gun
instead of a book by Keats or Baum or Whitman.
A remote will replace your paper,
advertisements instead of thoughts.
That you will turn off what I have so wildly been trying to turn on.
I am a tin man dancing, clunking, rigid in front of you.
Putting golden bricks beneath your boots, asking you to pick them up
and lay down a different path.
We've already seen where the red brick goes.
I know where my heart is on this silver suited sleeve.
(I would twirl and pirouette like a fool to keep your focus.)
Make you listen; make you believe.
Be an oil for these rusty, hopeful hinges.
Our world can be navigated, can be changed.
No need to fear the wizard or witches, east and west,
because we outnumber them all.
I want you to roar with me; I need you to get angry.
Lions aren't bashful. Drop your tail and fluff your manes.
When you forget yourselves and play,
songs and ballads and essays and delicious, pernicious words
string along behind you like paper lanterns. Lighting up just enough
to chase away the dark.
Brick built roads glitter before you,
made in the belief of something better than what you've been given,
more beautiful than south side red,
something to yank us all from silver screens into technicolor possibility.
I am a tornado. My anger and fatigue is a whirlwind each morning.
Coffee in one hand, hope in the other.
Searching your faces, looking for eyes that mirror my hunger.
Wanting you to wake from your dream and be the change we need
in this dying place.
The color is draining away.
We march along to a drummer behind the curtain.
The water is rising.
Peddled sweets and force fed distractions,
none the wiser and deaf to our own sounds of choking.
I need you to wake.
I need you to wake.
When others see me hanging, a scarecrow by the road, I say
Don't you dare tell me not to care. This is why we're here.
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