Tag: dyslexia

Soaked in Pain

On By Donny Lee DukeIn childhood education, Poetry1 Comment
One of the photos I took of him in a secret meeting in April, the last time I saw him
Untitled
by S. Nithish
The Beatles needed each other.
I need all of you together.
Nithish can only take you to the door,
but you have to open it.

*         *         *          *     

Soaked in pain, guilt.
Let alone in the dark.
Can’t find a ladder.
I hit rock bottom
and sink even deeper,
laying for the lies that built the world.
Where do I find a cure for this virus?

We stepped on a bubblegum.
Will stick for life.
Can I be forgived for being myself?
Now I see how people turn evil and bad.
Is it the society or the world or both?

I could almost call myself a homeless dog,
but even the dog is happier than me.
I saw a kid who can’t speak properly,
but even he is happier than me.

The worst part about life for me
is that I can’t go live with my daddy, [1]
and I’m afraid that I can’t forgive myself
till the end of time
if I don’t go live with him.

Ever minute of my life spikes of sorrow and guilt.
Poke me on the inside and the outside
it’s been very long time since I’ve got wet
in the rain of love and joy. [2]

Darkness on the corner and light on top of the mountain,
it’s easy to run but can’t hide
from the radiation of the bed I sleep in,
the hole that I’m falling.
The mud is soft but the hole is deep,
and I’ve gone blind.
I can’t see the world or feel the world
of what it was.

I’ve never wanted to go to North Korea. [3]
All I had to do was follow the damn train, [4]
and I am warmed by his smile
cause I’m the one who has his mouth stitched.
Who am I?
Why are we both chained to the pain of the world
and suffer from this poison
and keep drowning in the bottom?

Where is the divine?
Is it a rock?
Everybody thinks that I’m evil, bad, greedy, selfish.
The one who really love me
will really ever know me.

Where is my mother? [5]
I don’t see her.
Why aren’t you coming to the rescue?
This is the story of the universe.
Why aren’t you introducing the twist of my motive?
My story is not filmed by IMAX.
It is filmed by the divine, the universe.

What sin have I done
and pay so much
and put me in debt?
Look into my eyes.
See and feel the pain, guilt
that is untouched by you.
  • [1] Me, what he calls me
  • [2] He lives under almost total control so that he will not make contact with me in any form and so that he will make passing marks in school, and that control entails being called names, being beaten and slapped. In his entire school career, and he’s now in 9th standard, he’s never been able to pass all of his exams. He has learning disabilities, mild dyslexia and severe dyscalculia, but his parents do not believe in learning disabilities nor will allow him to be tested for such. I was there from his birth and informed his mother of his dyslexia when I began trying to teach him the English alphabet when he was three, seeing him write letters backwards and not able to put sound to letters, and when he was not learning to read and write English in school, 2nd standard by this time, I taught him to how. His parents have been told it’s impossible for him to learn to read and write Tamil.
  • [3] A favorite activity of his growing up in my care was, when it rained, to take off all his clothes and go and play in it, I mean every time it rained and it wasn’t too late, on the roof when we lived in town, simply outside when we lived on the farm. I only made sure he didn’t harm himself or offend anyone.
  • [4] In our own personal speech between us, this phrase, which comes from a GTA gameplay video that he liked when he was six and watched more times than I liked, came to mean for us the simplicity of just going with the flow if it were taking us in a good direction, and we used it among ourselves to correct one another for going against that flow. The whole phrase is “all you had to do was follow the damn train 
CJ.”
  • [5] The Mother, Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual collaborator, who is for him is the divine mother and whom he adored and dreamed about often.

The poem was written by a 13-year-old Tamil boy. If you’ve read his previous poetry, it’s more organized than this and more poetic, but he’s suffered a lot since he was taken from my home a year and some months ago, and his poetry has suffered also. The first verse is classic muse, the inner voice of poetry, in its mode of giving advice and guidance, and so I set it apart from the rest of the poem. I suspect the rest of the poem is not pure muse, is him mostly just pouring his heart out, although still under the rush of inspiration and still in the voice of poetry. The trauma he’s suffered has almost turned off his muse, and, with the exception of a song he wrote upon being able to spend some time with me the first time since he was taken, “Heaven and Hell,” he gets very little muse now.

In the months before the was taken and his ordeal began, he wrote poem after poem, two raps, and a song from the muse, each spoken or sung to him on the inside, and each one a prevision of the future he’s now in, the raw hopelessness and desperation of this present poem so painful to read in the light of those past poems, which are full of confidence, faith, and resilience.

I am very familiar with his handwriting and form of spelling, and so I can make out what he wrote (you can see the dysgraphia) and organize it into lines and verses. I include the pieces of paper that he wrote this on at bottom. They were smuggled to me recently. He wrote this in school, in secret, on the back of exam papers. His muse told him to give it to me, and my muse told me to give it to you.

Months ago I gave his school a copy of all his poetry and asked that they provide for him a child mental health professional because he had mentioned suicide. I did this with a letter, as the parents have bribed the police near the school to take me to the station if I come there, what Nithish’s mother told him they had done, and what he warned me about. I might add that neither his school recognizes learning disabilities, and of him they have repeated what his mother told them, that he is acting and failing on purpose because he’s a smart boy.

I had complained to the Child Welfare Committee of Puducherry earlier, and they didn’t even know what dyslexia was, and a bribe was paid there also, his mother told him. The school has also complained that he thinks of me a lot, and that interferes with his studies, not able to recognize that he’s suffering the grief and heartbreak of the loss of a parent, a relationship with him they will also not recognize because I have no legals rights to the child.

It took months for the school to respond to the letter, and when they did it wasn’t to me or to provide him with care; they asked him to write a poem about his school, praising it, and they’d publish it in their weekly newsletter. The request that he write a poem came some weeks ago, and he wrote this poem instead, after much deliberation and anguish over the whole thing, but he’s afraid to give it to his school because his parents would see it and punish him for it, and so, I have to open the door, albeit without causing him further harm.

Said Something the Country

On By Donny Lee DukeIn applied nonduality, ego activism, PoetryLeave a comment 
White supremacy for mayor
uttered in Wilmington.
They just chopped people to pieces.
The injustice lags the sky.
I don’t believe it happened.
I cried when I heard about it.
Can we play that again?

We do it every day,
not massacres,
although they come along.
We put people in power that hate Blacks.
We give White supremacy a place at the table
and call it by other names.
We don’t know how to count it.
There isn’t a racist person in the state.
Even a White supremacist will tell you that.

Do you know how they feel,
the Black people at the table?
Of course they’re racial gatherings.
What do we do with their anger?
We don’t know how to handle it.
It’s hatred for us,
and nobody gets better that way.
Nobody even knows what’s goin’ on.
We are stirred up by so many people,
and the unseen lends a hand.

Not all good people are good.
A Kumbaya feast doesn’t do any good.
Racial unity,
we have to address our sins first.
We have to see them there.
It’s a feelin’ we have around Black people,
even with our smiles on.
I’m sorry will you get the broom and sweep the house?
I’m gettin’ at colored folks
in the drawing room of White men.
We face each other
not as equals.
Our attitude hangs out
the beekeeper.
They are inferior to us
in our American bones.

These are racial wounds
we spit on and light on fire
in the complacency of man.
How do you get rid of this?
You shove it down people’s throats
a woke system.
That did a lot of good.
The White supremacists took over.
What do we do now?
We arrange guns
and burn down houses.
You think this’ll work?
We just break apart our nation
and cause a lot of hurt.

Racial aren’t the only issues in the sky.
There’s livin’ with each other
bein’ true to one another.
We put our cap on
and show genuine to people,
because we feel it,
the confusion of everybody
in the hurtin’ of life.
We know we’re dumb too.
We have to protect ourselves yeah,
but we take our hats off to everybody
and give them a little bit of us if they ask.

How do I get this across?
It’s a squeeze test.
Most people aren’t genuine.
Some people want to hurt you.
You have to know where to step.
You can’t carry your heart on your sleeve.
You have to know when it’s time to get out of Dodge.
You are generous but wise.
I can’t give you the roof over my head.
I can’t empty my pockets for you.

Now we come to the meaning of the Earth.
It’s not racial reports.
It’s how we all survive.
We get in with each other
to make the Earth work,
and it’s bigger than life.
We are bigger than Negroes and White men,
bigger than any gender we wear.
It’s across the great divide,
our true life and purpose.

You hear a Daniel say that today.
I’m in the lion’s den right among you,
and no one has eaten up my flesh,
but I can feel the breath upon my door
of some dangerous shit.
Can you hear me I’m tired,
but I’ve opened up humanity in myself,
and I’m doing it again.
Will you sup with me?
Will you even try?

Speak lotus,
these were reminds me
these were come up in these poems
something of Wilmington has happened
here in Pondicherry.
It’s race related.
I’m not Indian.
A parenthood of oppression
blights this land.
I’m standin’ up for my boy.
Free him please.
Don’t let this tragedy go down unnoticed.

The details would scare you,
and I’ve named them in other poems.
His name is Nithish,
S. Nithish,
and he needs help.
I sit here flabbergasted
at the amount of lies that make up this story
told to policemen and child welfare
and so many other people.

They put their Indian first each time
and the rightful law and order of the land
that made their parental rights supreme,
the underbelly the lie
that India will not wake up from.
Children are crushed by their parents,
abused and beaten
and forced to give up their lives for school.
Hours of tuition at night
kill their playtime,
and disorders such as dyslexia and dyscalculia are unrecognized.
They’re beaten for bad grades.

This is right and proper in India.
They just took my boy behind the woodshed and killed him
for parental loyalty,
all in the eyes of the law.
He has lost his personality,
had his identity crushed.
What this has done to his character
will put him in his father’s shoes,
a man who has murdered four men in Pondicherry
targeted by his gang,
on bail now for attempted murder
that never went to trial.
The case has been overlooked.
This is standard procedure in Pondicherry
if a powerful gang is involved.
People get away with murder.

I have to stand here and watch all this
happen to my boy,
and I can do nothing.
I’ve even been to the press
and contacted every major NGO in India
that deals with child cases.
I’ve threatened hunger strike,
but the divines I look to said no.
I’ve written poem after poem,
giving these circumstances,
but the social conditions of a blog
put likes in my hands,
put readers,
but I can’t arouse the crowd for my boy
and get this matter looked at by proper hands.
I can’t get off my blog.

Is this stupid,
to talk about this injustice,
to tell you my boy needs help.
I am just a Black newspaper of 1898
this happened at Wilmington,
a whole town overthrown
by White supremacists,
and no one believed them because they’re Black newspapers?

The New York Times and the Washington Post,
and all the major news,
came to scoop the story.
Met at the train station with the royal treatment,
the leaders of the coup
put them in hotels and told them lies
they all believed:
Nithish is in the hands of his parents
where he belongs,
and the Indian order has been restored,
the natural order of things;
his father’s an outstanding citizen
rich now in business,
his mother a gentle soul
that would never harm a child;
we have him in school 11 hours a day
because he’s acting and don’t want to study;
we know he’s smart,
and this is India,
and we make school the center of a kid’s life
for our national pride.
Buy me another drink aldermen,
and I’ll put in our newspaper what you said.

Would it alarm you his mother paid bribes?
Even to the authorities.
Okay, okay I’ll shut up,
but I’m a Black man in a White man’s world,
and no one listens to me.
Can you hear this?
It happened in Wilmington.
The offices of the Daily Record, a Black-run newspaper, were burned by a White mob during the Wilmington massacre of 1898. (New Hanover County Library)

The Roles of the Machine

On By Donny Lee DukeIn childhood education, ego activism, PoetryLeave a comment
Nithish and I
Take the questionnaire.
I have problems existing
the way you want
Council Bluffs.
An opera,
just what the world needs right now,
our post-traumatic show,
and I can’t do anything to stop you.
You’re the stupid muse.

Who’s to listen to?
I’m talkin’ storybook Earth.
Are you wrapped around the axle with it?
My God it’s got me by the balls.
I’m in Nithish’s pan.
Other than that I’m free.
You would not stage this.

I’m too honest for broad noon,
and I’ve got some big thoughts Earth don’t wanna look at,
I mean in your society room.
Have you ever seen an Earth poet?
You’re supposed to.
That’s what we’re all made of.
We’re speakin’ to all mankind.
Earth today,
we get mad at the word man,
but it farms poetry, you know?

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,
I’m in a limousine,
but let me get more Tennyson on yah
and Marilyn Monroe.
You think poetry’s got to have capital letters
and sing about verses and stuff.
Emily Dickinson would agree
poetry comes from the inner voice.
Slipped into you a mind swell
the beautiful rose of poetry,
even if it’s not a football field
of the huddle of verses
that high sound poetry to you.
I give you an inner lunch.

Okay we’ve brightened our books today.
I give you an inner sound,
tryin’ to find your head.
It’s all Madagascar.
Have I opened a movie on the showroom’s floor?
Train’s coimin’.
It’s all about them dice
watch your hedge podge in
where you put your blinders on.
Cute animals, eh?
And everybody’s longing to be free.

Be not normal men and women,
but reach above our kind
and show how it’s done,
ain’t that the anthem?
Movie after movie
of the greatest stories on Earth
get by our living room with this.
Would you believe they keep you in line,
even in your underwear?
Ask the surveillance movie Drop from start to ticket
or Seven Veils,
and I’m sorry I’m giving them credit,
but I can’t watch every movie in time
that littles us,
I mean like right now as we’re havin’ lunch.

So many lies are told
to manipulate your mind
and bring all the bad country to bad men
so demon they shine
with the impossibilities of human nature
taken to that degree.
They’re demon bad.
My mother sucked me when I was three,
and my step-mother terrorized my mind,
and I had to hide from her in the woods
until my father got home.
Teacher after teacher put me in the corner,
the kind that hate little boys all over the globe
for bein’ who they are,
and they had a score to settle with men.
Give a world this schoolin’,
and let’s see how she acts.
You can’t trust nobody.

Now I’ve got a little boy in the lurch
taken from me and reamed,
who grew up with me since he was five,
but I was there from birth
his daddy.
It makes you all nervous inside
that I’m speaking about him in this poem.
Exactly.
Can I show you the hurtin’ in the machine?
You think it’s child abuse
or a host of other ills,
men bad to women,
or a sudden and frank genocide,
or tumultuous war.
It’s our wrong seeing that causes harm,
how we bake bread
willfully and ignorantly
with the guardians of the universe resistant to change.

I love my little boy,
and that’s right and proper,
but I’m a White man and he’s a Tamil boy
in a red flag zone.
Surely his parents must be right
in beating him,
slapping him across the face,
not letting him go out of their sight
or surveillance system
or visit friends
so he will not contact me.
Do you know what this does to a child?
He doesn’t write poetry.
Now buy him anything he wants
and wine and dine him.
Surely he’ll stay on our side.

What’s the beef you reckon?
I made better miles with him,
and he preferred me to them.
It’s all in the menagerie.
Parents got rights over their children’s lives.
Just ask Child Welfare.
The mother gave them a bribe
and the police
and paid my lawyer more than I was paying him.
This is India and this stinks,
but who gives a damn?

Is anybody listenin’ to this poem?
I mean he’s got to go with us,
how you make a child today
serious
to produce that child
the staple of the machine.
Now let’s give ‘im bright airs
and promise him the moon
when he’s older
if he complies now.
Study hard kid.
Your worth is in those grades,
and your future depends on them,
and we will ignore your dyslexia by ignoring it,
you lazy little bastard.
We’re smart can’t you see?

Now what’s a boy worth?
I’ll tell you in this poem.
He wrote some miracles
that transcend time,
all in anticipation of being taken from me.
His parents hate those poems
and don’t let ‘im read ‘em.
I’ve put ‘em out in a blog
I’m addin’ to now.
A few more posts and it’s complete,
the body of his work now.

Now this has been shut off,
squeezed out of him
in a parental vice par none.
You like that?
That’s okay with you?
Who the hell are you anyway,
ordinary people?
I heard you.
The Indian consulate the Indian dear,
kick ‘em
to give this boy what he needs.
For fruit to work
tell ‘em read this boy.

Big Time Song

On By Donny Lee DukeIn ego activism, Inner Voice and Vision, Nitish's YouTube channel, overhead musicLeave a comment
This is Nitish’s new video for his YouTube Channel

Nitish wrote this song himself, while in school. Sitting in class, the core of the song and its basic melody came to him via the inner voice in the space of several minutes. He heard the lines sung to him on the inside, and he copied them down one by one, a process he’s watch me do since he was very small in the writing of poetry. Then, over the course of the next two weeks, as I put the song to the guitar, both he and I heard lines of the song sung to us on the inside, my muse giving the last 2 lines of the 3rd verse and the last 5 lines of the song, the repeats not included.

You may not grasp the significance of an 11-year-old having this kind of ability and talent, or that of his inner self speaking its truth. Heretofore he’s only written lines of poetry via the inner voice, and this is his first song. And, despite him not being able to carry a tune to save his life, it’s a song so you might listen to him this time, this video, as it seems you only really like music videos.

This minor miracle is a soul rescue. The boy was once again on the verge of tears at school, because he’s unable to keep up academically because of undiagnosed dyslexia, but at least at this school he’s not being beaten for it, as has happened in the past, trauma that surfaces very easily. His soul is not telling him he’s a victim, however. It’s letting him tell how he feels, but, it’s telling him not to run from his challenges. It’s interesting that it’s not telling him to do good in school but to shine in his room, your room in dream and vision a symbol for your own personal room in the house of humanity, your individuality, your personal consciousness, the body included, distinct from others but an integral part of the whole. We need parents, teachers, religions, organizations, big business, and governments to respect the sanctity of our room.

You might understand that the sudden attention to the song and the making of this video concentrated him on a difficult task, not to mention the awesomeness of having your inner self sing you such a song and all the faith in the divine that brings—like God really cares—drawing his attention away from his suffering and his ‘woe is me’ attitude, and it’s also helped him to cope at school, and now he’s doing a little better academically, but he wants me to home school him, something I very much want to do because it’s my job with him to teach him the craft of the poet-seer, my craft, and tell me the Tamil people and the world does not need another poet of that force and stature. Here are some recent lines of his inner poetry:

ஒலைய வெட்றது மட்டும் தான் நம்ப வேல,
ஒலைய கட்டுறது கடவுலோடய வேல.
[Translation: Don’t believe just the sound.
Building a sound is a divine task.]

I wasn’t born to be my parent’s child.
I was born to be the universe’s child.
You will express trauma.

Sometimes you can bend life.

God’s gift.

He’s wearing a ghost costume and a makeshift burka as a means of protest. It’s an artistic representation of the social position of children. Their voice is not respected or even heard, and they are not looked at as real people but only as someone to indulge, protect, and care for. Adults speak for them and tell them what they should think and how they should feel. They have no right to be an individual. They must obey the adults in their life, and they must go to school. If they protest, they’re threatened with punishment. It’s as though they themself, their personhood, is a ghost because it’s not seen or recognized.

The costume is also a creative symbol of the attitude in society of restricting the images of children in the public sphere of the internet, speaking of images that are not pornographic in nature. It’s as though we’re putting burkas on them in our attitude and, increasingly, in our policies. Specifically, we are protesting YouTube recently taking down a video, “Nitish 9 to 10”, a video that features photos and videos of him around the house and outside. In some of the indoor shots he’s in his underwear. There are no nude shots, no shots to suggest anything sexual. No strike was given for the video. As time goes on, YouTube is restricting content more and more, and what was okay before suddenly isn’t now. We would like YouTube to reinstate the video or at least give it back, as we don’t have a copy of it, and it’s an important record of his childhood.

Guitar and video by Donny Lee Duke
song© S. Nithish 2023

High Performance

On By Donny Lee DukeIn childhood education, seer poetry, the soulLeave a comment
photo by Donny

A Donny Lee Duke poem

I'll Show You
The sweet graze of the stars,
children enhance this;
children block this.
We don’t know what to do with children.
We crush children,
make school their only occupation,
even if it’s tribes.
They’re not supposed to do that,
hitch school to their star.
It’s mean:
so much force is used to get them to do it.
They’re whipped and beaten,
and you just think them frauds.

You don’t know how they are with you,
look up to you for so much sustenance.
They trust you.
Is that the only way to solve this,
with violence?
You don’t know what that kid’s thinkin’—
“You’re a bad woman Miss.”
Can you see yourself?
Do you even care?

What would you do if I told you
Nitish is a star in his own right?
He has the Mother’s calling.
He’s been initiated by God.
He will grow up to be a poet,
and I’m not kidding you.

Dyslexia has him by the throat.
You can’t seem to believe that.
You don’t even know what it means.
Is that so funny?
Dyslexia’s a large size.
It’s where kids go to school.
They don’t know how to behave themselves.
It’s all a mystery to them:
why can’t they do better in school?
They’re just dyslexic children.
Is that imagination to you?

Why do you hit him?
Is that your way with children?
You can’t do any better?
Why the hostility towards him?
He really tries, you know?
And he really cries.
Can you hear it?

Nitish is ugly now,
like he’s some derelict child.
He can’t do the simplest things
when it comes to letters and time,
numbers and what they do on the page,
school facts and memory power.
This is dyslexia.
It’s not a mean child.
Can you grasp this?

Now let’s look at Nitish
as who he will be when he grows up.
What makes you see failure?
You see his soul?
I’m a grandfather that does.
How do you know he’s going to fail?
He’s bigger than you.
He’s captured a star already.

Just take a mousetrap together and don’t worry about it.
Just take here your punishment.
You’ve got no right to hit him.
You have no right at all.
Now be a proper teacher
and be good to that boy.
You know I love that boy.
Believe me,
you hurt him,
and please stop.

Hand it down,
wean it down,
hand it to yah.
Ask that boy
to come closer.
You see a captain there don’t yah?
Never mind the school.
Please be good to him.
His burden is the world, you know?
A poem walk off with him.
You can history sing it.
You’re gonna see him be the very person children believe they can be.


I too had the world on my knee
and turned it wrong.
I was like you
and thought I did no wrong.
I couldn’t grasp its significance.
I’ve learned my lessons early and late.
I have to power you if I’m going to power me.
It’s something we all do together,
be reality human beings.

I pet my dog and say why.
We need a better world, don’t we?
That’s the story today.
Are you listenin’?
I am here with the Eyes.
See them?
Are you hearin’ me?
It’s the star point of Heaven’s gaze,
if you want to know the truth of the matter.
Now buckle up.
We got a long ride
to see the Sun.

Humbly and without reservation the teacher in question apologized to Nitish after reading this poem, and his teachers are learning about Dyslexia, but we still have a ways to go, and so I am not naming the teacher or the school and don’t want, don’t need, any outrage from you. I think this is the very first result I’ve gotten in an art action, that I know of at least, and it is so very close to home and so very personal, the most appropriate and needed kind of result. Thank you Mother.