God is my Mother

She curls up against my abdomen
As though trying to get as close as she can
To the warmth of the womb
She was outcast from only days ago,
With the fervency of faith filled parishioners
Begging in unfathomable tongues
To return to the comfort of their god.
Perhaps god is merely our mothers.
Do men not spend their days
Searching for their way back into the womb?
Who but God holds claim to creation
Or may cast down death without consequence?
Even man is birthed from our name!
Could it be god was made in our image?
And if that is the case, should we women not
Treat our bodies as the holy temple
No longer allowing sinners to enter without due repentance.
What if we taught our daughters a new faith
Bless only the men who worship on their knees
Who lift hands up with offerings
Seeking humble favor of their holy queens?
Ah yes, women must be the deity.
While men have wasted generations
Rewriting the story of the male savior,
That we may forget it was woman alone who made him
Man had nothing to do with it.
Salvation was formed in our womb, birthed between our legs,
Fed at our breast, and offered by our hands.
Tonight hold your daughters close
Whisper these truths into their souls
And let us remind men that they may not enter heaven
Until they truly believe.

There is a heart in my tea

Not like the kind that drums bass beats in my broken bones when you kiss me.
Not like "Yes I will love you even when I pull down your pants to find the same undies you put on three days ago...and we haven't run the washer since Sunday."
Not like tomorrow is guaranteed
Like sunsets after long walks
Or sunrises after hot nights
Or tickle me angry then fight me like lovely.

Oh no, like paper cut out pretend
Like yes no or maybe
Like holding hands till the bell rings
Like three minutes of a slow dance
Like little wishing large
Like forever only lasts till you sip me dry.

Scribbled Conscience on Abortion Clinic Letterhead

I do not hate children.
The judgment lingering on some naysayer's breath
Dissipates as it reaches my ear,
Too full yet of sorrow, anguish
With each appointment I speak
Feathered whispers against frail skin.
She loves you, she loves you not
Let the debate not weigh upon your tiny heart.
You may not live long enough for cuddles and kisses,
Sonnets and vows,
The last hands, the only hands
To ever hold you will be mine
But dear child know I cradle you
In the nook of my heartbeat
Even as you lose yours.
For if your lungs had ever begun to breathe
They would only be filled with the distress of
Past regrets, failed promises, empty dreams
A heaviness too great to place on infants' shoulders.
I do not hate children.
Though the Pharisees may cast me down
The question begs
Do they not deserve heaven without enduring hell first?
So gently I will perform the task
Condemning myself with each sterile scrape
Of a tool made to end life
Against a body begging not to make life
As I solemnly hold in my hands life...
God might say I am saving life.
Or maybe not.
But I pray we change the world into one worthy of life
Before forcing one to exist here.

Harvest Day is Coming

God bless the broken hearted,
The weary fighters,
The grieving mothers,
The silenced children,
The helpless protectors,
The faceless masses,
A voiceless people.

Long have your hands toiled the land without a harvest,
Long have your tears dried up against a violent wind,
Your voices echo forlornly in the shadows,
Your faces haunt the visions of the blind.

Harvest day is coming.
Put your plow to the earth
And whisper another prayer
For rain.

The War on Grammar

   Though most of you know me as a poet, I live a daily life following my passion for words in another way--teaching. I teach high school English. While it is not something I normally discuss on my blog, I feel that something important needs to be addressed today, and I am hoping you will help me spread the word.

   GRAMMAR. A word that plagues the lives of English teachers across America. This word alone has been used to demean our skills, justify our low pay, and shrug off our importance in your children's classrooms. The average person often isn't sure exactly what grammar is, though they often assume it has something to do with the squiggly lines underneath their writing in Microsoft Word.

Ok, so that isn't the true definition. The actual definition is this:

gram·mar

ˈgramər/

noun

1. 1.

   the whole system and structure of a language or of languages in general, usually taken as consisting of syntax and morphology (including inflections) and sometimes also phonology and semantics.

(Thanks Google!)

   While grammar used to be a skill respected and demanded by society, expectations have decreased quite a bit due to one new little invention: social technology. Cell phones, emails, Facebook, Twitter...the list grows everyday with a new app or website dedicated to compacting as much information as possible into the least amount of characters. As it turns out, when worth is determined by how few characters you use, people build a habit out of cutting out--in all areas of their lives.

   So, my students begin their days on Facebook, upload their breakfast pics (see? they're not even called pictures anymore) onto Instagram, tweet their friends for a ride to school, shoot a quick text of "I <3 U" to their parents, and land on the doorsteps of our public school steps with phones in hand and minds left back in bed. It shouldn't be a surprise that, when they begin their English assignment for the day, I am often greeted with the following choice complaints: 

"Why do we have to do this?"

"What do you mean, this isn't a sentence?"

"How come you don't just grade for completion?"

...and the reason why I write this today...

"But nobody else cares about grammar!"

   It hits me like a grenade to the soul. You see, the results of the "War on Grammar" may be on my students' lips as they work, but it is fought and funded daily by you and me. The truth is, Facebook has over 1.3 billion active users, Twitter has over 675 million users, and over 425 billion texts are sent out each month (http://www.statisticbrain.com/). Most of us encounter the world of techspeak multiple times a day through our various uses social technology, and every day we make a choice to fight for or against proper grammar. 

   In case you're wondering how this affects our students today, here is an awesome graphic to educate you. But this isn't just affecting our teens. This is affecting our adults as well. Parents respond to texts in techspeak, post Facebook statuses without capitalization, shorten words by omitting letters or replacing them with numbers on Twitter...and eventually this ignorance or laziness spills onto the floor of our workplace. A study done by the Society for Human Resource Management and AARP says that 45% of employers surveyed said they have begun increasing employee-training programs to improve grammar in the workplace. Almost half of employers surveyed! 

   Sadly, I have personally seen evidence of this truth in my own workplace as well. Professional Developments with mistake-ridden PowerPoints, emails sprinkled with IDKs and emoticons, and everyday speech with a serious lack of proper subject-verb agreement invade my grammar-loving heart throughout the semester. When students come to my class complaining that "no other teacher cares about this!", I am no longer surprised. 

   So, why write this? To show off my own more-grammatical-than-thou skills? Not at all. In fact, any person who knows decent grammar could tear apart this article for its sentences starting in conjunctions or ending in prepositions, fragments without subjects, and punctuation errors for days. This article isn't being written to suggest we need perfection--it is being written to promote a more conscious attitude about grammar. But I can't do it alone. It takes a village to raise a child. So, here are a few things you can do to help our youth learn the importance of grammar:

1) Set an example for the grammatical expectations of situations. If you are hanging out at home, feel free to use slang and techspeak. If you are addressing a stranger in front of your kids (at the grocery store or bank for example), use more formal English. This will help them learn that proper grammar often serves as a first impression to strangers and that it also serves as a sign of respect for the person you are speaking to (or "to whom you are speaking" for those of you keeping track of my errors).

2) Correct your own grammar. This is a small action that makes a big difference. When you say "There's a few people I'd like you to meet", simply take a moment to rephrase with "Oops! I meant 'there are'". If you use Facebook to vent about "my too horrible coworkers", use the Edit tool (or leave a comment) to address the error and replace "too" with "two". (And yes, I'm sure you can come up with a sentence in which "my too horrible coworkers" would have been correct.) We humans learn by example, so let's teach each other that it's ok to make mistakes, but it's also important to correct them.

3) Look up what you don't know. If you ever question the correct spelling of a word or proper usage of a comma, look it up! Nowadays, you can Google anything, and most topics have websites, Wikipedia articles, blogs, and even Facebook Pages dedicated to them! (I personally love the Grammar Girl. Feel free to post a comment with your favorite site below!)

   For the record, I'm not judging anyone's Facebook statuses or tweets (at least not out loud). I'm simply asking for a little help in educating our youth. The truth is, I am the English teacher, but I am not the only one teaching English to my kids each day. We are all teachers of the English language, and it's up to us to help each other look our best in person and in print.