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…

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