It's funny how you know people.
Collect bits of them—
an Oh, He's So Hot accidentally dropped within earshot,
a Did You Hear whisper, heard from inside a cubicle,

sequences shot from the corner of your eye,

inconsistencies you only noticed when someone else was saying something else,

a wretched fight, not worth the trouble,

the thing you gulped down, rising like bile into your mind,

the things they laughed at, and why.

It's gotten easier nowadays, with

Facebook and all that.

But the old ways had much more style, and took more skill.

And you didn't have to stop and realize how jobless you were.

It nibbles its way out.

Somewhere, imperceptibly,

A cheek shivers, a jowl wobbles.

The teeth are gnawing

Juicing tearing

Rabid, driven;

It gets through.

Peeks its snout out,

Sniffs, darts a glance around,

Scuttles again.

I particularly dislike it when it comes back to me, with an air of relish,

As though I hadn't told it in the first place.

She came and brought a feather,

wafted it onto the desk with

thoughtfulness and affection.

She thought of me when I wasn't there

And brought me a tufty white thing. ?

Then she said nothing and smiled

At my grinny thanks

And went away.

I'm so horrible but a feather

Is so artsy and I'm so not,

And why didn't she say anything What

does she mean by it We never talk

nowadays.

She came the next day to borrow a book.

Looked at the single shelf in my wall

that had books in it, picked up a book of fairytales,

(Perrault, not Grimm) and thanked me quietly.

Why does she always have to pick airy-faery

stuff And why did I just spell fairy faery And

why can't I get through a book, any book

whether serious or fun without it being compulsory

Oh God I'm turning into one of those colossal(ly)

bitchy bores that can't Think of anybody else and why

Are my capitals going Haywire and my line lengths inconsistent

And Why am i stuck in internal monologue?

BREATHE! BREATHE!

[gasping sounds. other people presumably come on stage]

Narrator (also me): Yeah, so. Pity the tale of she, he, whatever. This is just One of the many people (p.c.pronoun) knows.

guts

"Dude, he doesn't put his money where his mouth is. (though being commie, of course, this 'money' is just metaphorical) He says he's all political and shit, and then he doesn't speak up when people in his own department are being fuckers. It's such a turn-off!"

I am evidently not turned off,

but it's not that.

Only, I have no right to speak

where courage is concerned.

I haven't even done what I wanted

in the face of indifference,

Forget opposition.

on privacy

They are adding bricks to the wall of my grandparents' house

—there was never traffic to intrude in Harrington road, now there is—

And we (bourgeois-ly) don't like it.

There are dire warnings, now and again—

The State will pry. It will swallow up

all the information on all the forms you've ever filled,

And then you.

I slump in the chair on the porch, barefoot, coiled up,

and stare at chameleon on the wall, who is

failing to blend in with the new white paint.

A gate and wall can only be so captivating.

What's the big deal about privacy?

A lot. Why should we adjust without it

If it's a Right (enshrined, etc.)?

And Ayn Rand said that civilization

meant setting man free from man.

I don't underestimate freedom.

I need it. Yet

—perhaps this is indoctrination—

I have grown to appreciate

the relationships that grow

out of not being able to lock the door

and of being locked in together.

I defiantly say: my personal is political.
I get—I take—more out of this than they do.
I negotiate, I change
These aren't just readings to me.

Admission: they aren't even readings to me.
I don't read them.
And yet opine, question, discuss.

When my father says
In Incontrovertible Rightness, with Finality,
that when I have his grey hair I will understand,
I say Experience is important, but it's not All That.

I believe this, my concession to his knowledge,
But it's also strategic, an assertion of my maturity,
My brown-black, densely populated head
—I believe/ wish—
speaking up for itself.

How can I explain?
Sometimes he doesn't know
(The way people think nowadays, for instance)
Sometimes I don't
(I don't read the papers like I should)
We each say, when we do not know,
Oh come on. Everyone knows this.
And win to ourselves, in our heads.

I know I'm not talking nonsense (mostly)
When I set up the argument in class.
I know it's frequently useful
When I don't agree,
And I know I accept, correct, when I am wrong.

And I know I am unethical
When I could have known
And should have known
And when people respond thinking I do.

My mother has a point when she says what she says about history.

(She says it's useless.)

The usual progress-and-change argument,

And I always hotly defended the worth

Of my 94 in ISC

In the subject that investigates and records what people live by.

I don't know anymore.

How much can we leave behind,

And how fully?

I cannot say that I have forgotten

Even when I have (hopefully) forgiven,

Though my memory for facts is like

A baked-goods smell in a bare kitchen.

Lingeringly, heartbreakingly empty.

And how much do I even want to forget?

How much is the child the father of the man,

And when does it become

Sins of the son visited on the father?

I am not Nemesis. I can only

Remember, catalogue,

Perhaps provide some leads to proof

When the case comes up in court.

I cannot even say what I mean. Cannot

Rise in protest like those

Brave young college students of the seventies

(now mired teaching us)

Who feared neither torture nor incarceration.

It isn't that, now; I speak in metaphors

Because of the anecdotal evidence

Of generations of Experience telling me

That Growing Up and Succeeding In Life

is learning to shut up.

Even if you remember.

How much use is history?

Perhaps students must put up

Parchas and morchas in soundproof corridors

And other academic circles.

And maybe then they will remember to change.