MASONRY

(for Kevin Stitham, who doubts the veracity in “Pleasant Street Elementary”)
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink… BUT: you can make him wish he did” –Miss L.
What we have here… is a failure to communicate…” – Captain, road prison 36, Cool Hand Luke
OK, I was no kindergarten Cool Hand Luke,
landing in Miss Lipton’s Lockdown
back in the fountain pen/inkwell days of ’51
back when you were required by law
to publicly broadcast your ‘applications of
intent from the pillory of shame: “May I
go to the ‘basement’? It’s... uhhm… a #2.”
back when one of us got thirsty why, we must
all be thirsty and were lined up like soldiers at
the fountain… back when daydreamers,
fidgeters, and other felons who hadn’t gotten
their minds right yet knew the drill: hands out,
palms up, and the slap of the ruler…
I just cried most days--
like that day: coming to with a start at my desk
in a bad Twilight-Zone episode: all the other seats
empty now… the rest of our little robots standing
obediently in Lipton’s lock-step assembly-line
(my absence there a flaming neon sore thumb)
and me, desperately slithering away from my seat
tip-toeing unnoticed to the tail end and breathing
the reprieved man’s sigh of relief— only to discover
(Jeezum Crow!!!) that every last man-Jack-&-Jill is
clutching the PRESCRIBED regulation-size scrap of
paper egregiously missing from my own miserable
little fist… but now… too late… caught in the
Cross-hairs of Doom
the line moving forward and me,
the little lumber log riding
THE CONVEYOR BELT OF DEATH
to the buzz-saw… to stand alone and vulnerable
in judgement before the All-Seeing, All-Powerful
MRS. LIPTON
manning her own Saint Peter’s Gate and wielding her
tongue-depressor like a scepter and doling out dollops
of white flour paste from her two-gallon
MAYONNAISE JUG OF THE GODS!
...........
She blinks her expressionless,
lizard blink and sings prettily,
“Not paying attention again…
eh, Tommy? Well then!”
and trowels a gob onto my nose
as if I’m nothing more
than a mason’s brick…