"Hey Mrs. Sanford.......that Whopper thingy you taught us really worked!"

That's right folks I've been teaching people how I used to make Whopper's over at that Woodland Mall Burger King.

That 3 week job back in high school! Whatta good one: First plop down a bun
Then get a huge sick-o burger from the flame throwing flame broiler.....find some "fresh lettuce", throw the mayo...

JK! I slopped them a technique for paragraph organizing, and the dude above actually used it today on their state mandated, standardized test. AWESOME! Reach one kid out of 150, not bad!

Anyways, I was yet again, a "PROCTOR" for a long, tedious standarized test this morning (2/3 days now).

SILENCE! In the golden silence of it all, coupled with the buses that took us to the test site across town, I got inspired for a poem:

Title: Torso

With exhaust filled nostrils
Nairobi is recollected today.
Charred buildings and billboards give the sense of dirt and old,
Or a sense of the primitive.

"Matatus" roar by
Slammed inside with Kenyans.
The jaw drops @ the downhill scene:
Pedestrians head in and out of the city.
A metropolis awaits their 9-5,
And a downtown meat market exudes curiosity.

How are these people halfway around the world,
Striving, living, and being just like
Everywhere else?
My patriotic arrogance and misconceptions are challenged.

With it’s peculiar, intriguing air
The feeling is a reality check…
We’re all the same.
Some more or less fortunate
Yet still just living, striving, and being.

The hopelessness of our world is more obvious there,
Materialistically speaking of course,
Soulfully though…
That nation is alive in God!
Vibrantly clinging to Him b/c He is
The Only Stronghold.

Now at a time of uneasy foundations in this world,
What do I cling to?
I remember the shameful humility now. The lesson.
The torso shattering of my ideas,
And the reality of ideas in The Stronghold.