one room school house

all of our pencils were gods. a slate
to write our father's names. in the yard
everyone was a tulip until they weren't.
burrying dolls up to their necks.
call me a garden 
& i'll scream. all our shoe laces
untied & shedding skin. the teacher,
long gone, was not worth our attention.
she was the shape of a pound cake
& had wooden tops for eyes. horses are
programming computers in their fields.
soon we will have a telephone line
to ask jesus what to do with our names.
i kiss a girl on the pigtail & she
wags her finger at me saying 
"it's not april yet." how rude of me.
i used to want to learn everything. 
press my ear to the black board
& hear the rustling of pages.
now i just crave mirage. hallucination 
in the heat off the road. some classmates
hitchhike home. i'm not so bold. 
i got out to the darkness & ask
for comradery. un-lesson from the day.
remove gloves & petticoat. 
no more vocabulary. no more long division.
only the heart's mitosis. slipping & splitting new.
i built the school in my own beneath.
lifted a single floor board. then went &
took my child out from between ribs
where he perched. 
the boy had been counting 
all the figs on earth.
fed him midnight oatmeal & told him
to never be good. he asked
"are you the teacher?" & i said 
"yes but don't tell anyone." 
the new school day tomorrow will 
test the strength of the parameter. 
fences are meant for disregarding.
a dog in the lesson jumping 
clean over the sun & never
coming back down.