-during the term-

the wisecracker was too big for his britches

and the others of his kind with their seat-backs

tilted precariously against the far wall were no better.

cut of the same cloth.

chips off the same old block. nobody
against the wall lives up the Highlands.

a new pack of cigarettes was the price

of this morning’s admission

and a hot pack of Lucky's was moved
down the row hand over hand,

each nuisance of classroom decorum pulling a hard-

packed beauty to be tucked behind the ear. 

but the old one in front with the chalk in his hand

and clouds of chalk-dust drifting to the legs

of his corduroys to rest there all day,

and the next, is scribbling

over the blackboard as if they didn't exist.

he thinks he shits ice cream.

I was somewhere in the middle of the blonde-

colored desks, not of the back-rowers, more in-line

than out-of-line.

but to crack the code, to enter their narrow corridor

of rebellion, of differentness, of dumbness and denial

for even a minute or two became an obsession.

I’d be busy looking around to find the knees of the girls,

the sweetness in the studious sets of eyes lurking behind

the bird-winged glasses, the tops of their curious heads

as they wrote down the fragments leading to conclusions,

those eraser-tipped lips,— and over the mountains

the row of the doomed behind them snickered at the world.

Their girls were someplace else. outside,

they’d meet-up at the hoods of their cars.

The fastest cars in school. But

on my tepid way to meet my own kind

I glanced inside the old one’s empty classroom

and there he was,— chalking the blackboard, smothered,

suffocating,— nervous in the service of anticipating

the horror we'd make of his morning's occupation.

                                            

                                                      JMMJHS