To my gentle readers: excuse the venom of the following entry.  I've had a long day editing my paper and haven't had a good meal or a nap.  No creature comforts mean that my usual courteous self is as nasty as a barbarian without a horde. 

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Of course!  I'm the cheap, narrowminded, bastard that I am because of my parents.    Of course being the wrong immigrant minorty has also helped me understand part of America for what it really is:  A sellout of the values it professes.  That's why I teach to help curb that tide, but it's the proverbial kid plugging the leak in the dike with his finger.

My mentor said that's precisely the reason why he sent his kid to the Lycee International of Los Angeles.  He and his wife got sick of the nonsense happening in the public schools and were shocked at the standards of education in Pasadena and in San Marino (they were afraid that us Asians sucked up all the opportunities there--it's not our fault, that unlike others, we have a sense of cultural shame and dignity as immigrants).  I told him its because certain, well-meaning, Americans with post-colonial white-man guilt complexes have the deluded belief that proles, in general, WANT a university education--after all that's why we have a 30% pass rate in our universities  (he didn't like that being one of those liberals that just had his nose rubbed in his own hypocrisy).

But the same people won't put the money where their mouths are so very few people want to step up to meet that challenge.  I'm not altruistic.  I don't believe "education" is the panacea of all social ills.  And I don't believe everyone deserves it.  But I think it is an injustice that good people who want it are screwed over.  I'm fond of the lost causes.  Blame the romantic in me.  I'm fond of duty.  Blame the harsh Roman legatus in me.  I'm fond of creative mental challenges.  Blame the Chinese philosopher in me.  That's why I teach. 

I see the good people and teach them.  If some of the bad people want to be good I teach them too.  As for the bad people that want to remain bad and uneducated in anything--well I can care less if they pull my rickshaw or shine my shoes.  Don't blame me if they put themselves back into oppression they had their chance.

Maybe I can unconfuse some of the proles along the way and help them in their pursuit of happiness--which IS their right not some fantasy dreamt up by pot-smoking hippies feeling guilty about the silver spoons they were bornt with. 

Take that ending with a preposition.

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Here's a new short lyric. About family too.  Added links for obscure references.  Figure it out if you can and tell me who you think it is if you want.    Enjoy:

姓 (1st draft)

Your Name is first on their little list,
    Although they never knew you.
For who are commoners like you or me
    In the eyes of the sons of heaven?

Serene they sit on the dragon throne:
    Emperors of the Song.
Imperious, divine, majestic--
    They hold no awe in me.

And cannot force, for all their realms,
    What I freely give
To a simple girl who thinks she's plain--
    But all that's beauty to me.

Who:  That girl I ran away from.  That one time someone loved me more than I could understand and I couldn't handle it and couldn't figure it out.  I still remember our first date: studying with our heads together for that hated Modern Novel class.  I still remember the smell of her brown hair and her brown eyes.  So quiet.  I misred her.  Now after so many years do I understand the signs.  But it's too late.

What I'd say:  I love you.

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Here's another poem for a different person that I adore and can never be with either.   What is with all this impossible love--what's wrong with me?  I need a drink or a vacation or something to distract me from me.

Meteor Shower (1st draft)

Streaking each year, they fly past Earth,
The coruscant substance of a million wishes.
And I through smoggy haze,
Squint each wish,
Hoping one would get through.

But one or a million,
The truth still hovers
Like the dusty brown grit:
She's a star out of my sphere
And, as her twinkling sisters,
Flies brilliant out of view.

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I'm still wishing.  Maybe I should stop.  Wishing's for kids anyway right?

As Matt suggested here is the revision of "Vegas:"

Vegas (2st draft)

Burnished brass and swirling lights
Festoon this gilded town
Of plastic hopes and plastic dreams--
Of true love for a fee.

It beckons wayward travelers
With dreams of endless bliss:
Diversions from their weary hajj
So long as plastic pays.

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I like the alliteration for the "plastic pays."  Cut the word "promise" in line 6 and substituted it with "dreams."  Also the word "the" from line 8.  Did this so it could be tighter tetrameter-trimeter ballad-ish quatrains.  Although I don't like the word "dreams" rather than "promise"  I felt "promise" fit it better.  Can't get rid of the word "with"  I wonder why some writers like to think that structure-class words are expendable in poetry.   I've aways tried to keep poetry in complete sentences--as I think it should be unless it's done deliberately by the author--which honestly can be stupid if done too much.  Frankly, I not too fond of latinized or frenchified (thought always prefer Latin over ::gah:: French) words over good old Anglo-Saxon words, but sometimes they're useful.

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Random Thought:  Why is it always people whom are trying to make themselves smarter always using latinized or frenchified words when a solid Anglo-Saxon word exists?

Instant Reflections on that Random Thought:  I wonder if teachers refer to themselves as "educators" out of some sort of need to glorify themselves or that the term "teacher" is too low or too simplistic and that, in their own low feeling of self-worth, have to resort to calling themselves "educators" to paint themselves into something better in their own eyes.  Yes, one may argue the semantics of the roots "teach" and "educare" mean two different things, but for our use they are the same except the Latinized word sounds loftier, holier, more intelligenter.   

As if the word could make my duty any different, any more dignified, any better than it already is.  I refer to myself as a teacher and refuse to be called an educator.  Arrgh.  Let those morbidly-obese, middle-aged women in mumu dresses and wooden jewelry (aaah--don't deny it, you teachers out there.  I know you can think of at least one.  They're so typical after all--I can think of at least 5 I know right now! ) call themselves "educators."  I'm a teacher.  I teach people--sometimes about English.  I do not call myself names to make me feel better about my pay or my low station in American society or my inability to fit into normal clothes or a seat on a 777. 

I remember what my school's old English Language Development teacher from Australia said once (she was a vicious old woman--striking when she was younger) when we were hiring her successor:  "If I see another unhappy, FAT, middle-aged woman come through that door--it'll only be too soon." 

Sure enough the lady that came in next and hired fit that modus operandi .  And she insisted on being referred to as an "educator."  Surprise surprise.

My thesis director returned my latest draft for yet another revision.  When will it end? I ask.  When will the suffering end?  How many revisions will I have to do?  I am so sick of it now.  My own words seem to say FU to me on every page I'm editing.

That's not to mention that I have to finish the on-line courses for my CLAD certification for school.  If I have to hear "multicultural" one more time I'm going to scream.  Who cares!  Frickin' adapt to our culture.  All this acceptance of other cultures seems to only widen the rifts and to keep the divisions fresh in people's minds.  Frankly, I think that holding on to our cultures so tightly only preserves the prejudices that so ingrained and necessarily a part of our home cultures.  We need to move on and create a new culture or to adapt to the dominant one.  To value the old culture so much would not only cause those old prejudices to fester, but it's going to blow up in our faces.  At any rate it seems that this appreciation for other cultures is just an excuse for minority groups to posture for dominance over one another and the majority as well as for the socio-economically lazy proles to push for a larger welfare state than what we already have.  What they need is a hortator's whip not more dollars for their dole.

Enough ranting.  Here's a poem I wrote as a warm-up for my editing task of the day.  It's really, really, rough.  Cheers!

Rubicon (working title, 1st draft)

As much as I try: he returns,
Like a phoenix or some sort of madman
  Who doesn't know pain--
I guess that's what romantic means:
So glamorized by the moment that all
The past is glossy,
And all its disasters, forlorn hopes:
Valiant assays doomed anyway.

This time is always different in his eyes,
And the dreams of holding this new "her"
Drown the levees of experience.

And I, Brutus to his Caesar,
Can only shake my head
Knowing what's to follow--every time--
And each day, after the inevitable,
To pick up the pieces
Listening to that echo of blame in the mirror:
"Et tu Brute?"

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Yeah, met a new woman.  She's hot.  I'm not.  Same fear.  Not holding my breath.  If only I can take a shot of something.  You know I think I still have some Captain's select around.

Laters.

Update:  Took the shot.  Made me groggy.  Now my editing sucks.

Got this from Willie's blog

Rules: Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following...They MUST be real places, names, things...NOTHING made up! If you can't think of anything, skip it. Try to use different answers if the person before you had the same 1st initial. You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

Your Name:  Sam

1. Famous Band/Group:  Smash Mouth
3. Street name:  Shakespeare
4. Color:  Silver
5. Gifts/Presents:  Sporks
6. Vehicle:  Submarine
7. Items on a menu: Steaks
8. Boy Name:  Septimus
9. Girl Name:  Selena
10. Movie Title:  Silence of the Lambs
11. Drink: Sangría
12. Occupation:  Slave
13. Flower:  Sakura
14. Celebrity:   Santa Ana
15. Magazine: Smithsonian
16. US City:  Salamanca
17. Pro Sports Teams:  Suns
18. Reason for Being Late for Work:  Superintendent
19. Something U Throw Away:  Splinters
20. Things You Shout:  Shite
21. Cartoon Character:  Sponge Bob

Someone commented that it seems that I am unhappy teaching.  Not true.  I love it.  Of course one has to vent, but as so succinctly put in those lines from Avenue Q (a favorite, if not a bit offensive musical) sometimes you hate what you love.  There's just no going about it.  One hates because one cares.  If I were disinterested in teaching and had no passions about it I would be a horrible teacher and teachers I've known whom were like this were terrible, terrible teachers.  Parasites just showing up to draw their check.

Now students, they can be dense, but as a good friend said to me once: "They're young, so very young."  They haven't seen anything and don't know anything, although they think they've been around to know. They know in their heart of hearts that they really know squat and that grates on their pride and makes them petulant.  That's annoying.  The one comfort or delusion that I have is that some of them do care about learning and bettering themselves, some of them don't when I get them, but they will figure it out later on in life (like I did in university), some, well, some will never and end up like so many people in middle-management or on welfare.  There's always paper to push or an empty slot machine to sit at a baby to be born.  Such is life.

Unhappy, sure, but dissatisfaction is not necessarily an indication of a morale problem or even a desire to quit.  No, no, no.  It is a challenge and that's fun know matter how much I'm hating it when I'm doing it.  Like rock climbing or fencing or traveling or going on dates.  It really sucks doing it, but it's fun.  When the job becomes dreadful and fearful--then there is a serious problem, but dissatisfaction alone, no.  As long as I have the power to do something about it then its a day at the races: sometimes disappointing, sometimes great, but throwing down the tickets is always part of the fun.

Well, it's about halfway through summer and I can admit to having done absolutely nothing constructive.  Sleep seems to be the commodity that I'm commonly trading in recently since--it stands to reason that I need to make up for its loss during the school year.  Anyway,  I had to drag my butt up to write a few poems to stay in practice.  So here are a few.  I know it's certainly not my best as my genius is rusty from months or reading half-assed student crap.  One has to do exercises to be in practice so here's three from my brief sojourn at Starbucks today.  I try to keep the lyric short because of my firm belief that a picture is worth a thousand words; a thousand words--a nap. Here goes:

Vegas (1st draft)

Burnished brass and swirling lights
Festoon this gilded town
Of plastic hopes and plastic dreams--
Of true love for a fee.

It beckons wayward travelers
With promise of endless bliss:
Diversions from their weary hajj
So long as the plastic swipes.

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The Beach (1st draft--a limerick even)

The scorching sun and crashing waves,
The summer siren's calls,
That beckons en masse
Us lemmings to go
And lay down to show off our fat.

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Not the One (1st draft)

Heading back to my banquet table
Wondering what course was next
She steps deliberate into my path
And sweetly calls my name.

I try to blink recognition
To match voice to looks to name;
Remembering faintly that aborted date
And return her winsome hail.

Coquettishly, she shoves her hand
To show her bit of carbon
As if to cast a shimmering glamour
Into my jaundiced eye.

A valiant attempt to vindicate worth
I noted with a smile:
That matrimony did wonders for some
--it certainly did for her crow's feet.

I know I haven't been on much recently.  Want to be but just too indolent to post.  I'll get around to post decently.   In the meantime enjoy this little tidbit.  Cheers!

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To be continued.