Them - Eating Homework

wearing the beautiful silver ring my mother gave me,
suddenly a bite...as my fishing rod fell to the floor
along with the labeless empty can of some processed vegetable
that had propped it up...

our holy father is probably closer to the horseshoe crab than say...jupiter
or so i've been...i can't believe what i've been taught to take note of as precious
from the pledge of allegiance on down to the correct spelling of success.
i don't dream in cursive or standardized rigamaroling utility
powerful being scoffs at dog ears and near
truths smeared between index and appendix...but heck,
i'm smart now and at least the lunches were hot...

george washington, woodrow wilson, baton rouge, louisiana,
texas the longhorn state, refraction of light in the earth's atmosphere,
triceritops, a-e-i-o-u and sometimes...
there's no such thing as a dumb question,
"out damn spot", p.e.m.d.a.s., cosign of a 90 degree angle,
zero, "ettubrute", whales and dolphins are people too,
the civil war was something to be proud of,
subject, prepositional phrase, predicate,
and size order was only...the beginning.

so i wonder, has my doodling suffered...
who misses covering their textbooks,
authority figures folded hands silence...
brainwashing is educational...
we, the schoolboard and the church and state
acting on behalf of our sponsors...
are here to protect you...all of you
from drugs and the slightest knowledge of sole purpose...
i never had a problem with cheating...
upon receipt of your son and daughter's scores,
you may find him or her to be more than
apt above average in kind of...well the following.
i want my unicorn back...
and that last wish for an infinite amount of wishes...
the damned, the difficult, and the testable material...
that's funny...yours says good job too...
i'm so bad with the names of mice and men...
huh huh...he's so creative....but he's no xl-57,
these completely complacent self-sufficient offspring
can be confined and reconfigured to appear
as any of the three sexes and have a complete record of
every normal thing there ever is and will be...

fist fights...the twisted torture of social acclamation...
bells clang to segment the fun-filled artificial day further
as several hundred galopigan sea turtles line up to enter the building...
if you give them all different names and teach them all the same
thing...the earth turns into toffee...
and you can find out how good people really, really are...
static and cold...my formative years
were spent projecting myself outside that window
from chair with a desk bolted to it,
bolted to it the sacrificial billy goat accepted
what had been ponded through it...
and the next person who encourages me...
not to write in the first person gets left back.

in case of fire, quietly and in an orderly fashion,
form a single file line in the front of the class
and wait for your instructor, facing the door,
continue towards the north stairwell,
then proceed calmly and quickly towards the nearest exit.
leave your bags and coats behind kindly...thank you.

you can't tell me i'm not good at math.
poor writer my...
i've got 25 jumping jacks left and two big circles to run in...
don't want to be late for attentive head nodding and tie tying class...
present in six months, i'll be a college graduate...
and then i'm gonna be...mr dr., police, fire, space man,
ballerina, zookeeper, cowboy, president of the united states...
what are you gonna be...
memorize that...before you get sent out to sea...

wearing the beatiful silver ring my mother gave me,
i see an assembly of these hideous curiculum monsters
sharpening cocyx bones on a splintering rickety loom
all in a light grey auditorium through a knot in a borded up window
that was painted shut by satan and his vice principals.