7th Period Spanish

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"Who said you can't live forever lied- 

Of course, I'll live on, forever I'll, forever I will

Live on.

You can't ever deny my flaws.

I'll live on forever, I'll forever.."

 

Live in the crevices

Between the cracks in my sanity

And the faults in my character;

You put me on Death Row

Everytime you sent me to the back of the room

With that wretched desk,

And 7 crude letters carved into the wood

By previous inmates spelling out

QUIT NOW.

You've iscolated me from the rest of society

And turned me into nothing much more

Than a prisoner.

I would just like to know what my crime was -

Was it because I flipped upside down the statistics

That said I had absolutely no chance

Of making it to where I stand today,

Which murdered the obscured conception you had

Of that "one ghetto kid" at the back of the class

That somehow snuck himself

Into all of the college prep classes,

Because it couldn't possibly be

That I was something different

Than you thought,

Or was it because of my missed court dates?

Seemingly impossible questions

That you wanted to judge me by

That I somehow answered;

Vindictive attempts at you trying to push me

With the ice cold shoulder

That left me frozen every time your eyes focused on me in class.

You dehumanized 26 of us

Until we dared not question our dictator;

You single-handedly turned this hollowed classroom

Into a concentration camp gas chamber,

You've irrigated your cotton fields with the blood

Of enslaved students who would rather see red drops

Clank against their bathroom sink

Than be in your class,

You've left us trembling in our nuke chambers

Waiting for the next bombs that you will drop. 

I'm sitting in solitary confinement,

Hoping that one day, I will get to stand once again

As a human.

So, Miss -

The next time I raise my hands,

Do not take it as a surrender of arms,

But rather as an appeal

Against all the charges you have pressed against me.

You told me

That I was the worst student you have ever taught,

That you hope I will one day have to deal with someone as terrible as me,

That you give up on me, and probably should have earlier,

That you GIVE UP.

I just asked you to teach.

I'm going to school to become a High School English teacher.

Maybe with you teaching Spanish,

We had a miscommuniction in interests -

I SWORE our mission as teachers

Was to mold and shape the next wave of the world,

But you would rather prod and rip apart egos

For the benefit of yours -

Us students are just trying to be the best that we could possible embody

But you would rather strap shackles to ankles, trapping chaingangs of zombies

Wandering through the halls after teachers like you

Have killed off any hopes they ever had

Of being something one day.

I don't see why you flaunt around

Your little Master's degree

If they never taught you how to put compassion

Into your curriculum.

So to the teacher

Who has perpetually changed

My insecurities into realities -

I thank you.

For if I did not have someone like you around

To show me exactly what not to be,

I might have become that piece of shit

You always thought I was. 

 

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