Category: education

aint there nobody

our heritage irrational fear
disorder
powerlessness
flee into no diagnosis
self-medicate
ahhhypnotherapy demagoguery
newspapers is all
liars

school number 34 at sunrise
(in 1954 racists in pigtown protested school integration at elementary school number 34 on carey street and washington boulevard)

oasis

thorny brambles chancewind swept
miles and miles of labyrinth
around pools seenandrumored
magic carpets flyingover
crash in tumblingscratchingskids
stopandfind the painachingsorryguiltymess
loudly contemplate
each footwoundpiercing step

administration building at sunrise
(baltimore polytechnic institute’s pre-engineering program was opened to 16 segregated students in 1952 after petitioning by the naacp and the urban league—poly was then at north avenue and calvert street)

one table

infinite mass
measured in a few test tubes
stuffed into some old fruit jars
for days
years
numbered
dense superheated
monarchs spreading through mountains valleys
supernovae

former law school at sunrise
(in 1935 donald murray successfully challenged the racist admissions policy
of the university of maryland law school, then located at redwood and greene streets)

city in city

mortar melting and blowing away
through night and day
when time lapse
rises a fiery vision quest
expanding wings eyes mouths pulsing
roaring diffused
many thousands dream

oceans right down hill
absorb soaring vision after vision after vision
space beyond absorbs ocean after ocean
absorbs itself
music diffused
many more thousands dream

gothic high school at sunrise
(city college high school moved from center and howard streets to its present location on a hill between the alameda, loch raven boulevard, and thirty-third street in 1928)

no adequate compensation

as if
chemistry were alchemy
physics astrology
mathematics numerology
history eugenics
psychology phrenology
poetry telepathy
our best and brightest
might solve the half-life of fear and hatred
the eternity of what was said and done
engineer redress.
and yet
hail hearty noble youth

former high school at sunrise
(founded in 1883, frederick douglass high school was so named in 1925 when it was moved to baker and calhoun streets)

once and future egalitarianism

dividing and conquering
secures meat when there is prey
opportunity when there is insecurity
obsolete technology applied with brute force
fission uncontrolled, with limited fuel.
swirling in patriological event horizon
we reset the physics
or disappear

hospital at sunrise
(johns hopkins hospital opened on broadway street in 1889, aggressively applying science to medicine—followed by the opening of its companion medical school in 1893 as a result of funds raised and provided by mary elizabeth garrett, who demanded equal access to the school for women)

two children

benevolent corporations
sharing and sharing alike
on a wide sunlit treeshaded avenue
where young men learn great things
and sick heal.
father’s anthropocenic cryonic motherless toddlers
careen about the shrubbery
as birth and death sit chatting on the benches
his adolescents skateboard around the fountains
as truth and eternity remark upon the statuaries.
conestogas and teslas
roll slowly up and down his wide avenue
minding the traffic control devices and the speed of light.
in a building symmetrically added
someone may find the beginning of time

howard street at sunrise
(funded through his last will and testament, johns hopkins university began operating on howard street in 1876)