Thirty minutes to go
The clock blinks, smiling
At the fidgeting class

Its green eyes shifting
With sly patience
Pulling everything along

Chairs scrape the hard-wood floors,
Rush, collapse against walls;
The second resets
And they are back again.

All heads sag
Like ochre leaves
We are all trees now,
The dry air of knowledge
Eats our skin.

What?
The soulless buzz of fans
Their bland sobriety
Sloshes, swishes

Past our feet
Like bees
Their honey dripping

Flooding the brains
Muting all images
The professor is a forever sound
We hear, we hear, we grow old

Twenty minutes to go