The Math Robber

Math class as you know, makes me feel as if I am caught in a fiery explosion or better yet, like a robber is coming in and stealing my imagination, my artistic skills and creative mind. Quick and sly he grabs my brain and heart and turns me into a heartless, ignorant and boring person. I am being deprived of my imaginary paint-brush and my Dixon number 2 pencil and gives me in return dull numbers and a little symbol that looks like an X. He tells me to “multiply” or now that I’m in Middle School, solve for x. I think what the hell is that for I am a word collector and in my dictionary there is no such thing as “multiply.” The boring X lesson goes on as I see him running away with my brain and heart. I chase after him when the math lesson ends and the bell rings. I ask him to please replace these numbers with the words from my dictionary.  Finally I grab him in the hallway and he places my brain back in its little nest of painted flesh. The melty red roses I was painting come back to life and the descriptive poem I was writing falls back word by word with a dot dot dot at the end where I left off. My pupils come back and make my eyes look busy and full of wonder again not just the vacant bland blue eyes I have when I look at math.  Finally. I am now far away in my world, a world of which you will never know.

TWO NEW PAINTINGS: SUMMER 2010