Lyrics to 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.