Journal Entry on Funding - Palm Trees

Here's my lil poem on my school. I always like to say that there is no final draft with poetry. But here is what I have so far for this assignment. Its about how my school struggled with funding but masked these problems by putting on image that we were an amazing new school.


My school is a billboard without content
Flashing laptop guarantees
Collaboration unheard of
College style classrooms teaching me how to move about the rest
As if competition didn’t already fuck up our society

And hey! We got palm trees
Palm trees planted into our “new innovative school”
Portraying a learning paradise
Trying to catch the sunrays of our community
With their smooth green leaves reaching for a hopeful sky

But palm trees, shit
They are fuckin expensive
As we plant and plant images of richness
We forget that money needs to go to more important things
We rip out the roots of our schooling
Leaving it without the critical groundwork to sustain itself
We cramp classrooms
Making students hustle for help
And we slash all forms of creativity
Of an outlet
Saying art classes and sports are not valuable

But hey! We still got palm trees, right?
Coconut pleasures so sexy
But a reality untouched by many
Achievement gap growing as fast as my parents’ hustle for money
Teachers laid off as much as my brother drops out
Laptops stolen by young teens believing that
this is the American Dream

but hey, we still got palm trees…
we got no problems..
we got palm trees