Growth Mindset

We talk about mindset now
scientific language for angelic
airy-fairy thinking

the mind
the wish to escape into dreams and rationalisations
the narrative
the unified rational self-interested subject
mind over matter
don’t mind doesn’t matter

but maybe it does
maybe somewhere behind barbed wire
a child is asking
how much longer?
maybe they are tying together plastic bags
to try to make a soccer ball
and lining up for meals in the hot sun
and waiting
waiting
waiting
for
a home somewhen

maybe matter matters when it waves or particles
when it spits, pisses, bleeds, breeds
hurts, curses, aches, ages and disintegrates back
into the rich wonderful soil
we dismiss as dirt
as worm food
plant food
and again your mindset will not house you feed you

growth happens to trees and fungus
they don’t mind
don’t rationalise
the grey or deep blue skies

…before there were
mindsets
humans spoke of soul
angelic
moral qualms
and doubts
compunctions

again before there were mindsets
our heart was all we had to lead us
it has become a heavy, leaden
slab of meat machinic
working beat by beat
closer to ruin: the punishment
for what we chose to eat
or too long in our seat

the heart, the fleshy mess of it
was once what drove the person

deep in my heart
in the veins, the arteries, the blood, the flow
the pumping need to be
drive to connect and flow together
harden my heart against the refugee
before there were rational ways to keep them out

hush your brain science
hush your knowing better
hush your deficit discourses
failure now is a choice
and blame will be assigned
hush

I want to grow
not like
a corporation

but like a rhizome
popping up
where I
was not
invited

Stef Rozitis is a high school teacher in Australia. They have 3 adult children and therefore desperately hope that our species begin to work together to save this planet. Read other articles by Stef.