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