Bullies and how they work.

 There's literally no grimmer punishment than getting humiliated by your peers when you are young at school.
Notice how adults as mediocre as we are, quickly forget how terribly dreadful it was to fall into the trap of, or become by proxy the butt of someone's joke, a joke that will involve the participation of the whole class or even the whole year.

And how ridiculous the concept of safe is in schools, when the irony is there is nothing safe. It is a place of social danger. Bullying exists at the same level as always, it was just upgraded.

It has become more of a challenge. And also much more rewarding. Instead of leveraging the sensitive prejudices the bully find himself navigating and engineering situations to make his target seem like the tyrant. And as children naive many get sucked into a situation that paints them the bigot.

The bully continues unaffected. And the teacher pretends that level of manipulation does not exist.
The shame and agony of becoming a pariah when your greatest hope was to belong is worse than losing your job as an adult. Possibly worse than a break up.

Because they haven't built the emotional fortitude to deal with being blindsided on such a level.

Never underestimate a bully.

Shaded vestige

 Merging with grey,
Loves only night.

Daggers drag against hardened cement.

Enemy of day,
blemish upon white.

Teeth that should be crushed are sharpened.

Contrarian of light,
Ingredient of the afraid.

Wings that can be read, their shapes absorbed into tarmac

Concealed from sight,
The human soul it's prey

Almost a whisper

 Calmly I touch you on the shoulder
Neck skin folds 
Head sedately moves round
Lips part briefly

Words spill
As eyes glue
Anticipation meets action
You breathe a word

Calmly I listen to your wonder
Fondness folds
Curiosity gingerly positions herself
The mind wanders

Those who can't....

 
The thing about being a teacher reflects what my father told me a million times.
Those who can, do, those who can't teach.
But those who learn are incredible, their evolution is divine.
And although I struggle with feelings of being no one or nothing,
I see value in what they take.
I have become a gardener of ideas.
I have recycled and pieced together many crazy ideas.
My students have taught me more than I could have ever learned by myself.
I see my biases and my disgusting laziness of thought.
Most of them are smarter than me.
Some of them appear godlike. And If i wasn't born with the right language in my mouth.

I might just have become the nothing that I was taught I was. In the place I was raised.
A negative on society.
An addict.
A tax.
A vandal.

As I couldn't fit in, isn't it justified I became a teacher.

Ring leader

 Lambert creek
venemous caterpillar
Oak that trembles in winter
Unwilling to shed leaves
Feeding the prefrost pests

Cursing the land
as the boy in the sandpit
Tightens his jacket in gale
Positions his soldier figurines

Citizen salt
Ash and so hygienically clean
Not a leaf brown or rusted
Litters the street

Sitting on the Thonet
Contemplating 
scribbling in black book
Pondering excrutiating death

Rallying the restless
Harnessing their inadequacies
Into a tangible hate refined arcane
rehearsing for the scourge

Noble Aim Conundrum

 The intoxication of social prestige
 Pushed the prosperous to kill 
Their original altruistic goals
Overidden by an indulgnet sense of power

The group convinced of their modis
From pew to tank pray mantis divine
New found authority
A strange cull is undertaken

Armed to punish the world
According to their doctrine
The victims all happenstance pedestrians
Suffering and dying at their hands

The social prestige pushing them to do their worst,
predators for recognition
Shaping their words to sculpt
the uneasy realities of their atrocities

From the inside

 Beating your head on the inside of the door
locked in and subject to the reoccuring frustrations
The door is too thick
straightjacket unwilling
banging and banging

No resolve
No relief
No reprieve

The thick wood and brick
Sealed within
A tomb
Asylum mania
Brain damage
Skull fractures