01/01/2025
The Brute & The Stone Poem Teacher
Raphael (Raphe) Blackman was called The Brute—mind you, never to his face, always behind his back. Brute was a two-sport letterman—a lineman on my private college’s football team and the star pitcher for our baseball squad. His physique was chiseled from years of lifting weights. The Brute had 2-3% body fat. He was mean, nasty and merciless.
His dark frown and shifting eyebrows blazed a tangible ferocity as he glared at the opposing players through his football helmet facemask. The Brute liked to mix it up. After a football game he gloried in his bruises, gashes and cut lips, knowing he’d handed out much worse damage than he’d sustained.
Raphael was handsome. Girls loved to hang with him. He went through girlfriends the way a person with diarrhea goes through toilet paper—and he gave the girls as much respect as one would show this soiled disposable tissue.
The Brute had no friends. His father was killed six months ago while driving a motorcycle. A drunk over-the-road driver was responsible. Even the other players on his baseball-and-football squads stayed away from him. His rage was legendary.
As a 16-year-old, Raphe spent two years in a juvenile delinquent center because of a baseball incident. As a sophomore, pitching for the state championship, The Brute was in the last inning of the final game. The batter was an All-State shortstop named Nathan Thomas.
Thomas was batting .457, and he already had two doubles and one triple on the day. The bases were loaded. There were two outs, and the count was full. Thomas knew all he had to do to win the championship was find a way to get in The Brute’s head and have the sophomore pitcher throw one ball to walk the winning run home.
With the count full, Thomas stepped out of the batter’s box, spat on the ground, glared at The Brute and said in a booming voice, “Little pansy, sophomore piss-ant, think you can win this championship? Hell, that’ll be the day! I am going to end this game so you can stop this ruse of thinking you’re a ballplayer and get back to being your own sweet faggoty self—put on your bloomers, skirt and blouse and place more daisies on dear, dead old dad’s grave.”
The Brute loved to win, but more than his love of winning was his devotion to his father. Even Raphe’s family never talked about the tragic death of his father—they knew the wound was too raw for the young athlete. Upon listening to Thomas’ insult and baiting, The Brute’s face turned a dark purple crimson.
He ran off the mound to the dugout, grabbed a bat and went after Thomas. Before anyone could get between them, Raphe smashed a bat into the belly of the star opponent. The Brute started to deliver a kill shot to the head, but players from both teams interrupted him. The umpire, out of earshot and tying his shoe when Thomas made his insult, blamed the entire incident on Raphe.
Play was stopped, and Thomas’ team was given the victory. Only momentarily doubled-over on the ground, Thomas was lifted by his teammates on their shoulders, and the victorious shortstop was carried to the visiting team’s dug-out whooping and hollering with his teammates. Meanwhile, security guards put Raphe in handcuffs and took him to juvie.
Brute's intelligence and violence made him a hellcat at juvie. He used to steal hammers, wrenches, electric drills and tire irons from the maintenance shop, wake up in the middle of the night and use these implements against any peer delinquent who struck his fancy.
When the victims would scream, before staff members could come to the rescue, Raphe would hide the weapons on other unsuspecting delinquents. Each time, the youth with the planted implements would confess they were guilty. No youth dared rat The Brute out.
Having been kept away from girls for an extended time, it was difficult for The Brute. He would beat up the toughest delinquents in the joint and turn them into s*xual punks. The Brute had henchmen who sold drugs in the broader community. One of his underlings sold drugs to the son of the Juvenile Delinquent Center’s supervisor. Raphael had absolute control over this young man and could turn him over to the authorities on a whim. The supervisor knew this and always called Raphael “sir,”—treating The Brute like he was the one running juvie.
After his incarceration, The Brute met a juvenile-delinquent advocate, Reverend Carter Clay. Clay was a former gang member who had turned into a minister to help incorrigible youth society had given up on. A former professional boxer as well, Clay took Raphe under his wing because he saw severe emotional displacements in the troubled lad that reminded him of his own challenging life growing up. Clay helped The Brute get his GED and wrote a letter to my private college stating Raphael would be an All-American lineman if given an opportunity. Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas My private Catholic college took a chance on Brute, and largely due to his savage play, the team was conference champions for three consecutive years.
The private college coach, Marcus Newberry, knew Raphe was an English Major, and he told his star to take every class possible from
The Stone Poem Teacher because she never gave out any grades but As. For sh*ts and grins, Raphe went along with the coach, but it wasn’t necessary—he was no slouch in the brain department. His academic record was as solid as his athleticism.
Just as The Brute was violence personified, The Stone Poem Teacher was a model of holiness, grace, mercy and truth. Most of her brothers and sisters had become priests and nuns. As a five-year-old, she wrote love-poems to God and placed them under rocks, knowing angels would deliver them heavenward.
Also at that age, The Stone Poem Teacher stood in the middle of cornfields and let wind-tossed stalks swirl and whirl around her. Each flower petal, insect, ray of sunshine, fuzzy caterpillar, raindrop, ladybug, dandelion seed and tree leaf was a cause for her to celebrate and give praise—The Stone Poem Teacher saw God’s glory everywhere.
As a child, she gave her lunch away so often her parents thought a waft of wind might blow her off the planet.She found hurt animals, healed them, sang lullabies and praise songs to God—she possessed such beauty, everyone wanted to be near her to bask in her presence.
As The Stone Poem Teacher grew older, she got her doctorate in literature. She fought for the rights of Asian, African-American, Hispanic, gay, le***an, transgendered and Native American students. She once told me, “War is easy, Dale, anyone can kill. It’s peace-makers who do the hard work.”
Brute first encountered The Stone Poem Teacher on the fourth floor of the administration building in the hottest part of August. She was 90-years-old and weighed about 80 pounds. After climbing four floors (there was no elevator), the instructor’s blouse was pasted with perspiration. At this time, Raphe had no clue how a being like her could have survived this long on the planet. In his neighborhood, by age 12, she wouldn’t have been more than an unsatisfactory meal for a feral kitten.
This teacher radiated love, goodness and peace. Every kind word, every affirming gesture caused Raphael’s stomach to churn as if he’d eaten platefuls of turkey-vulture vomit. Day after day, Raphael was exposed to a woman who not only talked about God’s love, but lived it. The Brute thought her sappy, sentimental, naïve, simple goodness insane.
He wondered if she were like some untouched princess who had never seen hardship, loss or horror. The Brute hated when their eyes linked. Her whole body softened when she looked upon him—even though he only glared and smoldered at her every word and movement. The Stone Poem Teacher loved to hug students. Touch was divine currency with her. When she walked between the aisles her hand always offered an affirming stroke, a comforting pat on the back or a soothing touch. The Brute avoided her hands as if they were toxic-dragon paws.
Raphael’s anger and repulsion grew daily. Two weeks into the class,
The Stone Poem Teacher blew him away. Suddenly, in mid-lesson, she started singing a spontaneous love song to God. Her song was about beauty found in horrors, wonder unveiled in prisons and majesty rescued from hate like jewels retrieved from a cesspool.
This was it for Raphael. Enough! This teacher had to go, easy grade or not. Every diabolical cell in the furious athlete’s body poised for payback. He finally found a chance to respond to her crazed religious inanity when she assigned the class, “A Poem on a Topic of Your Own Choosing.”
The Brute thought himself very wise s*xually because of his lustful escapades. He thought he’d rub The Stone Poem Teacher’s face in the filth of his obscene mind. He would shake her, sully her innocence and horrify her purity! This wisp of a teacher would never be the same. The Brute wrote the following poem and turned it in:
“A Part of Me Left Behind”
With flaming determination, I faced the task ahead.
Before me, the moist, juicy cavernous opening awaited my entrance.
Linen, debris, disrupting screams and wiggling forms …
All tried to halt my determination, to no avail.
I ached for the sweet pink treasures within.
With hungry penetrating rage.
I ploughed into the deliciously soft crevice,
Thrusting, bursting, storming, piercing and annhiled II plodded onward into never-before-touched recesses of this cave.
The fit was so tight, I wasn’t sure all of me could enter.
I blazed my trail, seeking to transform the recurring screams and cries of horror into moans of delight, the soft touches made me groan and grunt like one of the Prodigal son’s hogs.
Wait! Look! There is more! Two luscious white mounds topped with cherry-like bumps appeared like appetizers—no, dessert!
These met my tongue’s, my lips’, my hands’ mauling grasp.
As I poked, prodded, roared and thrust more and more,
Like a miniature Big Bang my penetrating form exploded.
I gasped, leaving living streams in the soft furry surface of the cave.
I went out into the sunlight.
Can a cave whimper like a cat kicked by a steel-toed shoe?
I believe so, for that is the sound I heard. I departed for now,
But a part of me I left behind.
The End
Raphael waited two weeks for the poem’s return. When the Stone Poem Teacher stood over his desk smiling and gently placed the graded paper down like a flower before her beloved, the poor Brute could not believe his eyes. The brave Raphael experienced shame, an awkward emotion, magnified by his grade and the un-f**king-believable comments:
“Blessed Raphael,
“You used such an interesting metaphor in this poem. Your description is sublime. I felt as if I were right there with you in your cave exploration. I don’t know if you were holding me or I was holding you. I found your poem deep, complex, bold, adventurous and filled with profound insight. It’s so true. Everywhere we travel … each journey, step and moment irrevocably changes us. I’ve never had it pointed out in such a graphic way we leave a vestige of ourselves behind—what a mysterious, beautiful journey.
“Neither you, the cave, nor your readers shall remain the same after encountering this literary chef d'oeuvre. In letting me read this cave journey, a part of you shall always remain inside me as well.
“A+
“The Stone Poem Teacher”
Suddenly, Raphe felt a touch from the past; a warm hand gently rubbed his shoulder. “It can’t be, not my dad, no, not here … what’s this?” he thought. Raphael turned around and saw The Stone Poem Teacher with her right palm resting softly on his shoulder, looking at him with deadening earnestness. She didn’t just look into his eyes. Her gaze tore into his soul the same way his poem’s protagonist penetrated the cavernous opening.
Squirming, uncomfortable under the constant dissembling of her regard, The Brute was exposed. Every cruel incident from juvie, the ballgame that sent him there, every time he tormented another with scorn, silence, drills, hammers and wrenches, even the wide, incredulous eyes of the boys he’d forced to have s*x with him: this nun knew; somehow she knew—though he had no idea how.
The Brute, before this moment, had casually accepted all his cruelty without having any ethical or moral self-indictment. He was the man in charge. He could do as he damn well liked. Now the unthinkable happened. As he was facing the horror of his past, the hand on his shoulder started massaging, soothing, sending comforting caresses as the nun’s eyes moved Raphael from wasted unawareness to penetrating personal awakening.
Raphael recoiled at his teacher’s loving, kind regard, “Sh*t, she weighs little more than a loaf of bread. I could toss her across the room one-handed, and she’d crumple like a handicapped dandruff flake!” Yet her soothing touch kept him in check.
The Stone Poem Teacher kept the physical connection alive—not allowing The Brute to give in to waves of self-revulsion suddenly flooding his consciousness. Her eyes spoke to him, “I know every part of you,” and her hand gently poured tender affirmations to his tortured soul, pronouncing, “There is still good inside you. I’m not finished with you. Neither is God. In you, Raphael, I see glory, wonder and mercy you have never been able to access.”
Her eyes flooded Raphe with complete understanding. In the light of this scrutiny, Raphe understood The Stone Poem Teacher knew about his poem’s scarcely veiled symbolism. Still the hand was warm, its comfort lingered. She kept locked onto his eyes not like a mystic poet, but with the fierce tenacity of a pit bull trying to win a fight to the death.
With maddening intensity, that lasted moments less than forever,
The Stone Poem Teacher was finally certain Raphe realized she knew every aspect of him. Then she acted. She bent down, kissed The Brute on the cheek softly and whispered in his ear, “If you refuse to see anything in the world but beauty, that’s all there is to see. Beauty abides, my son. Cover it with layers of deception, deny it, have contempt for it, despise it, but when true love bears down and strips you to your core; believe you me, Raphael, blessed name of the Angel of Protection, beauty will out. This is my work with you, not teaching, but being the love invoking your beauty.”
The Brute had no words. It had been multiple years since a human being had looked into him, seen him as he was and not cringe in horror. What was this? To be known in terrible truth and yet loved? It was even longer since he had authentically expressed himself.
Raphael, who hadn’t cried since his father passed, felt a solitary tear wander down his face. He couldn’t remember the last time he had reached out with anything resembling kindness to another sentient being. Gently, with an undefinable tremor and exquisite care, The Brute nestled his hand over the hand of The Stone Poem Teacher.
Brute went back to his dorm room after connecting with his teacher. Briget, one of his disposable girlfriends, was asleep on his bed. Brute saw a pair of ripped panties on the floor, a bra slung across the bottom bed rail, a skirt in a tattered hump on the bedspread. This was all evidence of his over-eager aggressiveness which culminated in a quick, no-nonsense early-morning f**k.
Raphael looked at something he had never seen in Briget’s face—an innocence, perhaps a lost child hungry and desperate for love and attention. A strange, previously unexperienced sensation swept over him, the whisper of an ache.
Raphael saw whisker burns on Briget’s cheeks. Slowly, with sublime deliberation, he walked to the bathroom, rung out a washcloth with warm water and went to Briget’s bedside. With the same care The Stone Poem Teacher lavished on him, Raphe softly dabbed at his lover’s face with the warm washcloth and some lotion.
Briget awakened. She started to resist the caring overtures, commenting in surprise and delight at this uncharacteristic kindness from Brute, but she noticed in Raphe an emerging indefinable sweetness—something fresh, vital and new in his touch. Her intuition told her to be silent and treasure this moment’s healing. The Brute’s beastly legacy vanished as The Stone Poem Teacher’s divine currency passed directly from him to one woman’s needy form, a woman he was seeing once again, but for the first time.
