Why I am Writing a Dissertation

For my students, the ones

that click their pens like

a detonator

the ones that can’t fit

all of their life into my classroom

For the soldiers in unpronounceable places,

their ability to do

what I did not, could not

for the wind and the words

and the open mouthed earth,

for those that came home

to banners, balloons, babies

to an empty gate and a

lost bus ticket

for the day after the parade.

For the teachers who can’t teach them

for the schools that can’t fit them

for the students who were soldiers,

I am trying to open the windows.

I am trying to fill this place with light.

On Denzin (1989) Interpretive Biography

There is only fiction

only character and plots

redemption, revelation, and response

Only the stubborn oak

and its many branches

the acorn it drops

and the soil it finds.

Facts, facticities, truth, reality

are not as malleable as much as they are

multiple.

Even while I write this I am

writing a poem

writing a poem about truth

writing a poem about truth and hungry

These are not extended descriptions

of one man.  These are three men

All very much alive

All wrestling for the same black pen.