The following piece I wrote today after being inspired by one of my students at VSAA who brought up the "pink elephant in the room" as one of the things we don't generally talk about, that deserves more attention.
Enjoy!
Never Mind The Large Things Staring You in the Face (temporary title)
by Turiya
the pink elephant turns cartwheels
eats desks, grabs students in its trunk
crushes teachers and hunts for peanuts
lost in the classroom carpet
while students gaze silently at maps
marking imaginary boundaries of a sliced up world
pie that only a few get to taste
while the rest rent with no hope of ownership
moving on to musical pursuits
the elephant plays improvisational trunk jazz solos
growing in volume until the noise
can be heard beyond the windows and the parking lot
while students continue their algebraic equations
explicate the value of y
write eternal numbers representing the infinity of pi
diligently showing their work in order to get full credit
trying to raise their g.p.a. because college applications are due
and these are most important pursuits
from shades of pink to red to violet and blue
the mastodon is not afraid of hue
he shifts form, becoming larger than life
swings from the florescent lights
grabs hold of the curtains and throws them to the floor
while students practice diagramming sentences
study gerunds and parts of speech undisturbed
plan out essays and look for the ultimate hypothesis
dot their “i’s” and place their punctuation correctly
there is a time for paying attention to elephants after all
while eating ice-cream at the zoo
from the high seats in a coliseum viewing circus acts
during safari in foreign lands
no need to notice them elsewhere
look away and perhaps
they will vanish from the room entirely
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