6th Period

I have a long and lengthening list
of thing that do concern me:
the chaos of my notebook, stuffed
with slips of papers snatched from
students hands, etched with pools
of blood drawn in pink ink.
Stacks of papers, broken arms,
blue ink smeared on fleshy tongue.
Scabs. Spilled milk. Green beans up nose holes.
These things don't weigh on me but rather tug,
grabbing what's rough and not yet hewn.
While students age eleven multiply
by twelve on sheets made vast by numbers,
I hide at the window to verify the world
outside exists. The evidence is rising
in an L-shaped foundation and skeletal
frame of a building. It's stagnant and huddled,
in line for a meal at the Goodwill. It's legless
and begging for money. Beside the calloused court
behind our school two lego men in cartoon garments
pass spaghetti hosing towards a rusting tank
inscribed "PROPANE." No fuel, perhaps that's why
the school is cool today, the radiators idling
dormant. Amid the silence of pencils on paper
I'm snatched by fear and fear of fragility
and see the students and I, the desks and the chairs
launch skyward in fiery propulsion. We don't.
We wait, we multiply and pump propane,
shake cold cups of unclean coins,
spill blood in cities wrought in rust.