When Life Invades Art

I'm conducting poetry workshops with my fifth grade students. We read poems, feel them, breathe them, write in the style of them or write wherever the inspiration leads. I often create alongside my students. This poem was written in the style of the Carl Sandburg poem 'Who Am I?'. I often find my teaching work to be nearly meditative; my home life and my own fight with Lyme don't enter the classroom while the students are there. But sometimes, life invades art.

Kindly do not reprint without permission.

Who Am I?

I am the hissing wisp of smoke

that slithers into your nostrils while

you sleep;

I am the jabbering, pulsating trepidation

that shrieks whitely with no

sound at night, jaws cracking.

I hunger for your life.

I deform the expectations and dreams of multitudes

as I smother the exuberance of youth.

I stand with barbed boot on your heart with

another spike in your neck

hunting each minute

by seeping minute

withering away the fresh apple of your brain.

I cannot and will not be contained.

I am Disease.

L. K. 2016