In the stories of the Self, the eyes of sunshine, it’s been Armageddon. A small voice out front says no, it’s been leading to something big. I’m a hope, and a skip, and a jump away from that. That’s what I’m pettin’. You hear the ups and downs, the soliloquies harbored on the snake. I swear these muse. I’m tellin’ the story of God. I’m not coughin’ up Skid Row, but I’m giving you pencils and integers of everything, and I don’t neglect nothin’ out. We’re on a roll now.
I feel something big. I can’t get my heart out to show you. I’m bein’ pushed from the inside. Still I can’t see my boy or anything else big, like a sudden public share. I still sit in someone else’s pain and cry, anyone on the planet I hear their story loud, and join that with my own. I still see the pain of the world and not its bright sunrise.
What is this bear I speak of now? A coming tidal wave, my head upon the stake? My faith in God hasn’t reached that far: he loves me at high noon, I mean like in front of everybody, and I’m not a bad man anymore. I’m a way with him. Would you count that, or do you even see him right out here open fields with everybody? I do have that smile.
Do performance art, and I’m from there. Stay in your room, that’s me. Catch me, you are my god I announce things at the seriousness of a child, and I am hurt by one. Look at me, a fattening calf, I have golden reins. I don’t know how to handle this: you don’t put my face on. That’s how it needs to be done to God knows what. You cannot contain this. You think aliens wrote it, or a moved lunatic. Some of you know I smile the meaning of the word. Play your blindfolded world.
Did the boy end up revealing anything to us? He’s happy and content on the outside I heard that your honor. On the inside he can’t handle himself, is boiling in pain. These are irreconcilable. He can’t hold this script down. Those around him only see the happy kid. He doesn’t reveal himself inside. I am not a name on his lips, like he doesn’t want to see me, but he cries for me inside and is continually scheming to see me or make contact.
These are all along the lines of Earth. He can’t make it right. He can’t get up out of his stool. He’s frozen there, and he and I are frozen there. You don’t know how this hits me. It’s like a betrayal that loves me so impossible to understand. He won’t even call my name, acts like I do not exist, and he is finished with me. This just does my head in, confuses me to no end. I swear the real boy’s right there, but he is so earnest when he shows me his inside, especially when he calls me and cries— so much pain, so much out of control, with a rage that wants to blow up the world, and I’m supposed to believe him? I get so worried about him. There is no end to this. There is no issue from this as he grows older.
I just want to walk away, but I’m pulled back every time by divine love and my unmanageable love for him. He is so big inside me. This is all in my reality. Can you lose a child, have him kidnapped, and he’s winin’ and dinin’ with his kidnappers just down the street, sending you secret notes of ransom that say daddy I love you so much and want to be with you? This is a crash course in reality. Fuck this I want off, and the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and other divine bid me stay with him, and I love that kid so much I do.
Here’s the trick. Get rid of the pain they say. Don’t even operate on that attachment. Count the divine only you see in everybody. Don’t be forlorn. He’s comin’ back. It’s all in my muse, there or in the background of every poem I write, his name, his name, Nithish, Nithish.
Stop the forlorn? The ache inside my breast all the time, the absence of my child and his dangerous psychological situation, how in the world do I stop that or believe the divine he’s here sometime soon? This plays with me and plays with me. Are the divine devils? I don’t know what’s goin’ on. I’ve lost my child.
You my divine reader swing with the Gods with your heart-breaths, your beliefs, your unaccountable sum. Have you seen the Great Beyond? Are you a born object of God, what others now discuss as an occasional moment in the Sun? It would change your way of life, radically transform society, because it’s there at our divinity’s base. We lit triumph with our children to bring this home to us.
Do you know the transformation of the outer life into the inborn divinity we wear? When do we put that on with our children, a radical new way of life that busts out of the husks of the old, where children can be themselves and not the uniforms they wear, not crammed down society’s schoolbook, not made to think your thoughts but open God up inside themselves? I’m a motion on that, a mover, and can I remind you here of our high aim in your classrooms with your kids, in your downtime? Nothing more to say except my time with children is that, who they are in time and their inborn sense to go beyond it a revolutionary.
How do the boatmen row? Gently and in springtime. I’m saying my worth, and I’m not a cherry picker. I’ve seen the city up high and the elephants the grass ate, the thieves that robbed bottom and the song they sang when they saw God they now with children row. I’ve counted the stars and their admonishments and protests, their gifted speech to the poets of the time. It’s all a crocodile beautifully put. It doesn’t change us. It only makes us mean towards our brother when we find them doing wrong.
Who can translate poetry the Gods themselves can’t bore? Do you know the living Ray? It comes form other shores, and we hand it in our pencils blockchains we wore. Can I pencil this in for you with the freedom of the Infinite involving children, involving Light?
It breaks on us a new path: you’re the leader finally acting, and I storybook my little boy from a full moon today where we draw redemption. Outstanding citizens no, we want radical revolutionaries with every child we write. Do I dare you? Radically I write time. I am life’s sacrament. It won’t pull me under. I am not dyin’ here. Somethin’ climbs in my room I don’t know. It’s got handles on it, but oh what they are? I’m a space nigger in time. Maybe that’s coming to an end? Maybe there’s a zombie apocalypse, and I get loved right out in the open by my boy? I think it will take that for him to act, despite this poem I wrote. Maybe I’m onto better days. Maybe I’m big stuff.
It’s Armageddon folks, is that how this is supposed to end? No we just pray there, and we get up and run the world again I lit in the face of certainty. The foreigners would wait outside folks, and the lady is a figure on trapped. Startled by his brightness, I see the Alone in every tree. It looks out at me with my dogs’ eyes. It’s in every figure of self, looking out at the world with timeless eyes. I am not alone here, even though you keep me at bay. I am a figure of Self, and I break bread with the Alone as a matter of happenstance. You can’t rob me of that deep. You can’t even see it.
Fine, I will wear your society, but I’m on revolution’s springs, and I stand there alone investing in time an uprising out of it. Now read me won’t you please? I see the Alone in every face, and you are nothing but he. Crowd me now with your figure of him. I dance on this delight on Earth’s shores just poetin’ the hell out of time, and that’s the start of it, prayfully yours.
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.
That kid sees daddy God’s will. That kid never sees daddy again. His parents are evil saying that. Evil and horny, they market this child for themselves. This is bad business. They stomp on him every day. They can’t help themselves. It’s gleeful. They like making this boy suffer. The power surrounds them. They feel like Gods in his presence. They get off on his pain. They know he loves daddy, and they punish him for it, every single day.
They are beside themselves with hate— their child wants to be with daddy, and they know that. The terror they put through him to force him to keep his mouth shut, or to force him to lie, is what you do to your child when you’re monsters. He is so scared of them he has thoughts they will kill him, smother him in his sleep I’ve already told you in another poem. Can you imagine doing that to your child, being the terror of his life?
They revel in this, will not let him up, and the power they have over God, it’s where they find themselves stupid. God does not honor them or what they do. How God allows evil to take us for a ride, is everywhere apparent. You saw how long the Nazis rule, how long Islamic State cut people to pieces. Then God comes in, and evil forces are destroyed, like the Earth itself does it. You see it happen every day. Evil gets reckoned with.
Evil gets changed, can we show you the gist of this story? Nithish is not here to suffer so his parents can be punished for it. They will know what they did, and their love for their child will show them, what has been there a measure on the situation, keeping the beatings to a minimum, keeping the abuse from killing him. You know he thought of suicide. What this boy has done is shown what child abuse is when it’s not recognized as abuse, here in India where you can beat children and totally and absolutely control their lives, bend them to your will, even expect they worship you, and even adulthood does not find freedom.
Nithish has gone through this so you can see this. They’re not expecting art. They weren’t expecting mine. His parents aroused a poet to defend his boy, to help his boy, to save his boy, the likes of which you’ve never seen, have you? A power of poetry that gives God reign, that let’s Him do His business, you hear it now.
But we find another poet here, tender in years, his parents have tried to murder because they associate it with me. I opened up poet in him, and you’ve heard him sing. He has the future in his hands, a poet of prophecy, and he prophesied this abuse and his waylay in it. Read his poetry this can’t be denied.
Can we come to terms with Nithish? His future poetry writes a verse that will finally free children from being someone’s property, from having the status of slaves, not to buy and sell and trade, but to make them obey with no say in the matter, and to make them do their parents’ will regardless of the cost to the child, to make it as though the child was born for them, for the parents’ pleasure, for the parents’ rule, to obliterate the fact that a soul came down on this adventure Earth to work out its purposes in time. This slavery we need to see, and these slaves we need to free.
To abruptly stop his childhood in the slam shut of school, when he has a learning disability they do not address, they know but will not admit, will scar him for the rest of his life. It’s their thang with him, and they love it there. You’re meant to be crisscrossed. You’ve stolen the boy’s life, but you cannot see you’re wrong for the trees, the stupid people who back you up, the negligent police, the blatantly ignorant Child Welfare Committee, and a school that is so backward in education they let parents abuse their child and don’t even know what a learning disability is. They are ridiculously called New Modern Vidhya Mandir Higher Secondary School, and they’re not going to stop me from showing them to the public when all this is over. They need held accountable for this. I will see to that.
Interstellar from national backgrounds, I will show where Earth is wrong in school, school responsible for the shape we’re in, and school we need to change. Academics take a backseat to being human you colonial legacies fillin’ the Industrial Revolution’s need. Antiquated, outdated, and on steroids, it’s destroying our world. Beavis and Butt-Head are to help us through kids to their appointment in time, to their children now adults later, to the sting of childhood making us examine ourselves in roles as parents and teachers crammin’ adulthood down their throat, and they are yet but children. You very ignorant and narrow-minded, corncob stuck up your ass, uptight bunch of people, did you hear that?
Good, I’m weighin’ on yah now. Just wait till that boy regains his pen you stop shoving school down his throat and let his poet speak, his purpose on this God’s green earth you won’t allow cause you’re dim in the head and give his parents absolute rights. Just wait till he gets that pen again. Just wait. Nithish will give us the right ideas to parent children, and that is his future fate. That poet is among us now silenced, gagged. You think so? Let’s wait and see.
In and out cars, this one got longer hair. I’ll print the trailer one horse at a time. In the first poem, [link] the codpiece is about enlightenment. We need our system’s input, and we are too skeptical for God in our lives. The horse and pony show makes us system mean. We rob flowers, in all department stores. Terrible consequences for wood. We get ostracized and banished from society, and this is kingdom hall. We bleed and we say grace in the wrong movement. Can you discover this?
It chops us in half, with special counsel. You fool erase that paint. I have to rein it in. Crash on symbols. Let me monopolize ages of reason. That’s think tank in our purple yard. It’s expensive to have sex the behavior is wrong, and that is defined culturally, in sudden kingdoms. I’m a Mastodon that lost its way in heavy equipment. Society won’t forgive me for that, and it only knows the spell of society. Can you gauge that?
We pour out morality on our sleeve. We bury there all our common sense. Hallelujah I’m saved, says the Christian in the room, and society’s muffled because of that, as Christians enter the Legislature and take over government in halls of America. A thousand and one evils, they all blow up on society in a Christian yard. It helps itself to the wrong measure of man. We are so much more than behavior and bended miles.
We can’t see straight. We can’t even look. We’re confounded by time. They study us, all these wrong people in the room, the ones who think they know the right and have their hands on power. They wanna move us outta here, where we pinpoint the throes of man. You can’t lick this chocolate. It’s time on Earth is few. Everybody knows the dance, but no one knows the realization that we are loftier than our species, that we can make it right, one society at a time. This is certain gold.
We are all cattle and sheep, unwilling to find the destination of man. We think it’s a religious figure or an atheist’s technology that tries to play God. Can you character here, find the Sun? We revel in sweetness, then shoot it down with our guns. I don’t think we know what innocence is. It’s cropped out in school, and we lament the loss of innocence in children, and we stand there and rob it from them in the harmful environment of school, and we wanna make it harder, put them in there longer. Can you see this? This is the greatest fire on Earth, makes society a slave model and pits us against one another.
Have I reached the end of this talk on climate change? It’s not felled trees I’m talkin’ about or branded water, or the warmin’ skies. Can we get down to business and do the Earth? Can we see past our little lives? Can we see the bigger ship that man is and will become? How do you land down here? We have to get right with one another, and that’s our climate change. If we are going to get bigger than ourselves, we’d have to see importance in every man, woman, and child. No one is discounted. We come together on love, in every set of circumstances, unless we have to stop killin’ and people in the violent act. We have to be strong and swift for that. Then love finds us again healing lives.
This will give us breathin’ room to discover ourselves. Without this no one’s there, except the few who manage to escape society’s bellows. Where have I placed you? Where we need to go. Where we need to be. Can you refuse this? Most people will. Necessity will bring us to it in the eventful years ahead. I’m a blueprint magazine, and I have my windward sail, and you know I’m here.
I felt the wind blows. How to translate our lives a meaning shifting. You can’t ground it good. You can’t even spell it out. Where does it come from? Where is it going? It’s larger than space and time. We have our supernal roams. This give rise to these, the worlds, and we know you’re in there Mr. Nithish. It comes close to the bottom and close to the top, but a world is a beanpole. We stargaze there. We champion our own rounds. Oh come on come up.
How do you handle a hungry man? With patience and loving-kindness, unless you need to shoot ‘im, ‘cause he’s in our garden. I’ve just mentioned to you the problem. We don’t know when to quit. Our lives are in danger here, but defend ourselves means this: too much overkill. And what do you want? I’m sorry I’m backin’ off. Let’s make this count. We don’t have to be at the dinner table in the substance of our lives. We can be bigger than kin and they all wear my face. Humpy Dumpty sat on a wall.
But we’re relieved to find we are on our way, once we know how to get movin’. You there, will you just sit there and smile? The fear of death join our room. Can we back up this yard? We’ve got a whole lot to loud out, and it’s time we did not let the fear of death stop us. Who lands this creek? You’ve got to get up and get moving, knowing death is always there circling you and the lives of your loved ones. Accept death hell, we’re gonna learn to change it a long time in the future. Meanwhile, we don’t let it stop us from getting bigger than ourselves.
Oh my goodness wide movement. Morality will help you there, but it’s not the goal. We live and die: oh you’re bad temple will cook, because it’s not your religion anymore the church seat. Let’s gold bottom’s up. Where Douglas? We’ve reached stars, all over ourselves. We review the Sun, the gold I was speaking of. Can you hear it? It’s right there on the tail end of this poem. Let’s get busy with it, gettin’ the strength to see it. I give you links, the bread and butter. Let’s copy this on one another: I love you.
Stop dyin’.
Don’t bury yourself.
Don’t compromise.
That’s when your guesses are weak.
Our thesis is this:
a themed to understand mankind.
Is that controlled see?
It’s bigger than you and me.
It doesn’t land you in the dirt,
grovelin’ life force pennies.
You know what I mean?
Now let’s program.
I will see you off to school,
okay?
I can’t do that.
Let’s do that.
You and Roberson are part of a family plan.
We have convinced you to send your kids to school.
Now that was a trick.
Don’t you blame it on the industrial revolution?
Thereabouts.
Universal education,
put China as a role model.
She started long before.
I’m not tellin’ yah to do it.
I’m tellin’ yah it stinks.
What’s wrong with society?
School.
We teach academics not to be good to one another.
While Japan started with good citizenry,
they created a monster,
copying the West.
We don’t teach boys and girls to be good people,
how to handle life,
their depression,
modes of being,
ways to get out of trouble.
We focus on one thing:
good handwriting
in academic subjects,
brain things.
Do you know how dumb this is?
Look at society.
I’m not talkin’ teachin’ morals,
do this don’t do that.
Yah hear me kids?
We’re not producin’ robots
Confucius.
We want them to obey
their conscience,
and that’s not mean and cruel.
It doesn’t hit anybody,
unless it’s warped,
like a magnet,
and is attracted to society’s dominance.
We want individuals here (sorry India)
that stand and reason
for the juxtapositions of society to stop.
Do you hear me Houston?
What do you teach in a classroom?
Able-bodied citizens,
can I speak with you?
Of course, I’m open.
Why you learn from me?
Now that’s a touch subject.
I need to study you first,
and we look at criteria.
These are society’s ways
we understand how to teach.
Well this presentation
is not a memorization kit.
It’s a school play.
You play a lot
to get the concepts down,
where society meets its roles.
Okay now you be the immigrant,
and you’re the assimilation policy.
You take it in droves:
students must constantly assimilate new material
of what they will face in life.
They will be ready for life.
We want to think and we want to feel
oh my that’s sad isn’t it?
I don’t think we avoid the tough stuff.
There’s a toddler in a revolution
sees his parents killed,
his brother his sister.
They live in Gaza now
or a kibbutz nearby.
Alright third grader,
feel that.
Are you lonely now?
Do we teach them to read?
Without society you cannot read.
We read all the time.
We need to learn to read to write.
Expressing feelings and ideas
takes the spotlight.
The grammar and spelling
is to encourage them to write,
and neither demands them to write.
Now I can polish off the academic subjects
in the same way.
It’s a feelings test.
Does the student feel like shit?
There’s still a prize
for academic achievers,
for those smart kids.
We just follow up
with their holistic report card.
We need them kind too.
We need them on the ball
to bring in a better world.
Piles and orchards,
we don’t spread them out in those.
Okay kill the neighborhood
you’ve made the secret formula.
Here’s an idea:
don’t try to make a scientist out of everybody,
or a doctor or an engineer.
Oh India you’re lost here.
Does the kid have a talent?
Teach them that
as if their life depends on it
because it does.
Teachers are role models
of good behavior.
If they fly off the handle they apologize
and start again.
Did I say they love children?
They never hit them.
They know what it’s like to be in school,
and that’s not all day.
It doesn’t take over children’s lives.
It doesn’t even need to be so big—
little small groups here and there
neighborhood arranged,
and there’s mixing
to bring everybody to state.
We do sports.
Do you see how small this is?
A few hundred students no.
Sometimes just a handful—
depend on the center used.
We really want time for the students
to get the attention they need.
How decentralized is this?
It’s a whole other concept of education,
called No School by the Mother.
No one follows her anymore
in this regard.
You wouldn’t spank them.
You can have an administration
visiting all the schools
constantly,
friendly,
a great big leviathan no.
We want nice people
that can work hard and play.
Do you hear me society?
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.
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.
Harm's End 