Footnotes: While our children are not our own...Let's inspire & support their dreams...

Here's a morning offering that my podiatrist shared with me at our last meeting.

I was introduced to Khalil Gibran in my early 20's by WNEW-FM DJ Rosko and subsequently bought "The Prophet." I still have that copy. See images below.

I am fortunate to have health care providers like this man who share who they are as well as what they know. This doctor, himself an artist, is from the Mideast and has a special needs son who also loves to draw and gets excited about street art and artists...

So do I...we are kindred souls...

There are many video versions of this Gibran poem that he shared...Here's one: (the text is below in the Gibran section of the post)

Your children are not your children~Khalil Gibran (02:26)

ROSKO

This reading by Rosko will help you experience his soul...

"He would lie down in the grass...and look up at the sky..."

(the full text appears below this next image)

WNEW-FM 'The Non-Conformist' by DJ Rosko (04:29)

[From the video's creator] A reading by DJ William 'Rosko' Mercer about being oneself. I titled it 'The Non-Conformist' though I don't know the actual title or author. If anyone does know the title and author please contact me with that information so I can update these details.

Here is the poem that Rosko reads:

About School - Anonymous

"He always wanted to explain things, but no one cared. So he drew.

Sometimes he would just draw and it wasn't anything. He wanted to carve it in stone or write it in the sky. He would lie on the grass and look up in the sky and it would only be the sky and the things inside him that needed saying.

And it was after that he drew the picture. It was a beautiful picture. He kept it under his pillow and would let no one see it. And he would look at it every night and think about it. And when it was dark and his eyes were closed he could see it still. And it was all of him and he loved it.

When he started school he brought it with him. Not to show anyone, but just to have it with him like a friend.

It was funny about school. He sat in a square brown desk like all the other square desks, and he thought it would be red. And his room was a square brown room like all the other rooms. And it was tight and close. And stiff.

He hated to hold the pencil and chalk, with his arm stiff and his feet flat on the floor, stiff, with the teacher watching and watching.

The teacher came and spoke to him. She told him to wear a tie like all the other boys. He said he didn't like them and she said it didn't matter.

After that they drew. And he drew all yellow and it was the way he felt about the morning. And it was beautiful.

The teacher came and smiled at him. "What's this?", she said. "Why don't you draw something like Ken's drawing? Isn't it beautiful?" After that his mother bought him a tie and he always drew aeroplanes and rocket ships like everyone else.

And he threw the old picture away.

And when he lay out alone looking at the sky, it was big and blue and all of everything, but he wasn't anymore.

He was square and brown inside and his hands were stiff. And he was like everyone else. All the things inside him that needed saying didn't need it anymore. It had stopped pushing. It was crushed. Stiff.

Like everything else."

[From the video's creator] (This Poem was written by a Grade 12 Student who committed suicide some 2 weeks later.) The words for this poem were found at the following link; bathhomeeducation.webs.com/poems.htm. Thanks to zoetmb for finding this

[My Note: The above is a non-working link...So, an extra thanks to our YouTuber for preserving these words...]