We sat in the back of science class
bored out of our minds; we'd hit each
other with pencils across our forearms
until we were striped red and white and

we looked like dancing shrimps. We found
comedy in hurting each other, playing
both sadist and *******, feeling
the power of inflicting damage
and the humility of pain.

Years later not much had changed—
the pencils now needles, blood striped our arms.
The classroom, like my home—now a car, we joked
about burning a library in Alexandria. The humor remained

but it had changed; no longer about what lied ahead
we joked about what was;
architects of a fallen temple
that never stood yet continued to be raided.

Once the jokes became stale
I couldn't swallow them anymore
spitting out a poppyseed after
receiving the Heimlich maneuver

yet others choke their whole life
on a hollow humor tumor
benign until malignant
the ruins of their adytum
cover the hill to die on.