I'm sitting on a shelf, wrapped in plastic, with maybe a millimeter of space between me and my partner. We all look the same, but really it's just a mask. That cheery yellow overcoat; the perfect, clean ridges, the sparkling tattoo written in green, all of it a lie. For soon my body will be devoured. My truths will be exposed. The black point that holds all  knowledge will be revealed, layer by layer, inch by inch. I don't know what kind of treatment I will recieve but there are plenty of possibilities. I may be used for knowledge, for love letters, for art beyond my wildest dreams. I may be used as a distraction from any little thing.  I may also be abused; my skin pierced, bitten, the flesh ruined. My knowledge may be broken, or worse I may be left alone in the dust. The worst possible thing, even worse than any injuries, is to be abandoned and be wasting away. For my life isn't worth living if there's nothing to do, nobody to inspire, and if my yellow overcoat of lies stays the same length forever.  If my disgustingly pink brain is not used and my knowledge stay intact, there may be a chance that I could be used, but theres always that chance that I won 't be. I stare at my companions, some are eager, others terrified, but on the outside, we all look the same. For us time is frozen, until someone makes the first ****.

Forget Me

I’m just a tool

You use me more than anyone else

And I just keep giving back


Admit It

Without me you’re  nothing

Nobody cares about you

Until you use me again


Hold Me

Because I need to be held

Your grip is my only longing

The secret to all that’s in your mind


Underneath

My skin holds all the secrets

My grain reveals them, almost instantly

So make sure you find it soon


Destroy Me

Wear me away like your life depended on it

You know you want to, I want you to

Or my life will have no purpose at all

I.

Here we halt our march, and pitch our tent
  On the rugged forest ground,
And light our fire with the branches rent
  By winds from the beeches round.
Wild storms have torn this ancient wood,
  But a wilder is at hand,
With hail of iron and rain of blood,
  To sweep and waste the land.

II.

How the dark wood rings with voices shrill,
  That startle the sleeping bird;
To-morrow eve must the voice be still,
  And the step must fall unheard.
The Briton lies by the blue Champlain,
  In Ticonderoga's towers,
And ere the sun rise twice again,
  The towers and the lake are ours.

III.

Fill up the bowl from the brook that glides
  Where the fireflies light the brake;
A ruddier juice the Briton hides
  In his fortress by the lake.
Build high the fire, till the panther leap
  From his lofty perch in flight,
And we'll strenghten our weary arms with sleep
  For the deeds of to-morrow night.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                        A Dixon Ticonderoga #2 Pencil from 1955

Motorized bathroom vents don’t last forever
The workmen pulled down the old one from ‘55
Amid a tumble of old nails and bits of wood:
A Dixon Ticonderoga #2

The yellow paint a little aged now
The green metal ring a little bit dull
The eraser now hardened beyond all use
The point well-sharpened with a pocketknife

What sturdy craftsman from the long ago
Measured out his work - I’d like to know

Dublin is soaking,
ink running on sentences, churning on the page.
America is splintering,
(the suburbs specifically, not the nation)
into  leftovers of Ticonderoga No 2.

These streets breathe in and out and
up to clouds illuminated by the Temple Bar,
as people stream through Dublin's narrow straights,
running thick and bright and damp
soaked with the scent of amber,
brimming with warm words like barley and hops,
the world reflected through the half-empty glasses
abandoned to rest stale at the bar.

This boy is a livewire to a madness,
quivering gasps flying to spark on her tongue when
she finds the kiss in the corner of his mouth is
tightly stitched in with the sound of each smile.
Her hand still clings to the smells of sweat and beer
with miles of backtracking ahead.

An Abandoned School

Young dreams, now scattered fragments on the floor:
A little handle into a corner flung
The disc of sizes never again to fit
A number two pencil into place for a trim
Nor will the made-in-Chicago hopper
Ever again save for the classroom prankster
Sweet-smelling slitherings of cedar shavings
To fling about while Teacher’s at the board.

A new Ticonderoga ****** into
The spinning Scylla and Charybdis blades
Was tested by steel, the dross savaged away,
By turning the handle and grinding away,
And from this grim ordeal emerged The Point,
The perfect point, the adventurous lead…
It’s not really lead, stupid, it’s graphite;
That’s what Teacher said.  Don’t you know anything?

Girls are stupid.  They play with dolls and stuff.
I’ve got a real cap pistol.  I’ll draw it.
You want to see? Look! No, wait, that’s not right;
It’s better this way…Ma’am?  Uh…integers?
Arithmetic is stupid.  Science is fun.
I’ve got most of the Audubon bird stamps
And I liked it when we cut up the frogs
Old people are so mean. I’ll never be old.

A leaking pipe drips the minutes away
Outside a broken window summer sings
Its songs of freedom as it always has
The desks are gone, the electricity is off
The air smells of education and decay
The classroom now is littered with the past:
A broken crayon, a construction-paper heart,
A silence longing for children’s voices.

Ticonderoga, bite-marks to the lead
Bare-bone, grammar school and phonics
Sentence structures, finger paint
Yarn through cardboard looms
Shel Silverstein and crab-apples
One day I will change the world.

The day they told me you had resigned,
I went searching for you.
My eyes sharpened to find you
like two new Ticonderoga pencils
on this timed, standardized test of life.
I, your pupil,
felt desperate to fill in the bubbles
on this journey
to fill up my heart again
with answers to questions
I knew only you could
score & tell me were right.
But you never had exams in your courses
I should've known when you left,
that was your way,
your blessing
to write my dissertation
and live my philosophy out, for you,
You had given me love,
you had always seen what I couldn't;
my potential. Who I am, truly.
And that's why, from you,
I learned everything & could feel internal peace
for I learned my purpose
& in my search for you again,
great teacher,
I realized you had never left
and the test had never existed.
I will still always wonder though
where you went.

(c) 2014

I don’t know how many times i’ve had to use a number two pencil.
Whether Ticonderoga or some off brand.
As though number one is something you cannot mention.
As though number one is something too fragile for you.

I don’t know how many ways I could compare myself to a number one pencil.
Other boys and girls prohibit interaction with both of us.
Limited interaction with us is necessary.
It’s as though we have no purpose among this world.

It’s required to use a number two just like it’s required to shut your mouth when you’re seventeen
Adults tell me, “you will use a number two”.
Their voices like thunder enveloping my opinion making it evaporate with all beauty and sense I withhold.

It’s been a repetition.
Number two number two number two.
Number two is used number one so technically number one is number two.
Number two number two number two
Number in all

Number two to my father, number two to my peers, number two in grades, anxiety, depression, the relationships in which they’ve been unfaithful, inexhaustible cravings for escape but suicide will make me number one
So technically, when you’ve sharpened  number twos to their limit, they become number one.

positivity feels like a drop of water in a desert
and i'm tired of calling you with nothing to say
because if the desert were an ocean, i'd be the curve of a wave
something forever shifting, steep then still, steep then still
constant, but not the same
(splash splash, ripple ripple
a storm and a tide shift and a push of an oar
but then i guess even shipwrecks have anchors)

it's something my math teacher taught me to think of in numbers
the idea of a shifting wave
a fundamental of calculus, easily measured by tangent lines and graph paper,
a protractor and a trusty dixon ticonderoga number 2
(the best pencil in the world, i've been told)

but textbooks, backpacks, and the smell of dry erase
never gave me any clue of how to deal with seasickness.

do you like that world?
do you sit at your desk staring at chemical equations
considering a list of things that dead white men did or didn't do
a pencil in one hand (dixon ticonderoga number 2)
a knife in the other,
blood and ink and a bathroom sink
spilled like oil on pavement across your mind
(thick and dark in a toxic puddle, bad for the earth
but if you look at it sideways, sometimes you see rainbows)

when you go to bed and your hands shake and your breath
shivers out of you like a ghost,
are you satisfied with your world of locker slams and ABCs
and choices that you're told are yours?

maybe you're the desert
maybe i'm your drop of water
i'm tired of calling you with nothing to say
because really i'd guess i have too many words
i'm an ocean, motion sick from my own fluctuating sea,
and i would never want for you to be like me,
you're beautiful with your mountains and rocks and sand
i just with i could make you understand
how ever part of you glows when you talk about music
or how free your voice sings when you talk to me
while you're aimlessly doodling masterpieces
on some stupid vocab sheet.

A Small Boy to His Pencil

O, Ticonderoga, my magic wand –
I wave you, and I am an engineer
Speeding a silver passenger train
From Texas to California, and back

I wave you once again; I am Robin Hood
Drawing my bow against a bishop fat:
“I invite you, Your Grace, to a great feast
in Sherwood Forest, at your own expense!”

I wave you yet again - and Old Miz Grouch
Fusses at me: “Do your sums! And don’t slouch!”

my mind is filled with shadows and weakness and
he is sleeping in his bed 6 miles away.

walking distance; running distance.

every pore of my scarred skin is filled with missing him and alcohol.
every dent in my flesh was raised by werewolves;
they only turned red at night.
my eyes only flow oceans at the hours I feel emotionless.

my mother puts crayons and coloring books in the backpacks of her children.
says that when they are angry, they should write down what they feel in the color that fits best.
now when I go to school it is all Ticonderoga #2

happy  gray
sad  gray
angry  gray
scared  gray

Library

You lacked grandeur, no city hall portal,
with the footprint of a chapter book face up
on the lawn, spine a rule for tomes of cars

shameless with chrome.  A nameless perfume
bathed us in the foyer, a lure to place our heads
in your open oven, greedy for another gassing.  

Landscape of sturdy oak plain and canyon
buttered in light from a flotilla of hovering
saucers, the wind swept butte topped with glare

ice where my finger skated titles and my dog-
eared card toward a woman with cats eye glasses
lashed lightly on thrilling swell by the thinnest whip

of lanyard, yellow Ticonderoga number
two at the ready in the perfect quiver
of her platinum French twist, pert pink bud

eraser bobbing up and down with every
delicate toggle of the fat rubber
date stamp, so mesmerizing to a dewy reader

brought to his toes, straining for a whiff
of subtext, your memory a mist rising from this book
cracked wide, lolling fragrant in my lap.

Tonight
out west,
above and locked inside a transparent captivity of clouds
sank a sleeping and almost completely burnt sun
I watched this fire, fall into your townlet
with a hopeful feeling of synchronization
Could have been the direction
my eyes out cast
giving cause to this overdue emotion
to be spoken
Or
my ability to place  
your human wonder
at the center of any setting
without borders
On your legs
crossed over lap
poetry pad
accompanied by the Ticonderoga
you write with
Not forgetting to mention
A perfect pile of tossed up hair
half fallen
the other locked in a clip
And of course a pair of dreamed about eyes
watching simultaneously with mine
into the skies
of where we might both see
patiently
the day close out
turning grey light haze for when night time comes around
to give all the crowd under it
a soothe
Where yawning is allowed
Leading us to a bed
to sleep away this now downhill day
for some shut eye
drop out

north
yellow dixon ticonderoga #2
thats what I write with
I picked it up
itched my nose
rolled it around in my hand
and wrote.
south
my **** sinks
down
into my bed
what a comfortable
bed.

Her creamy chocolate hair
Flows down into caramel,
And the ends tickle her rosy lips
As she bites them in concentration.
Her Ticonderoga taps anxiously on her cheek,
And the wheels turning in her head;
Almost visible.
Maroon sweater against ivory shoulder,
Caramel hair against a black bra strap.
When she talks, the room melts away
And all that is heard is her accent,
The way she creates music with her phrases.
Her smile radiates sunshine,
And her eyes are a kaleidoscope,
Always changing,
Green and gray and amber specks
Colliding to make a sweet mosaic.
Poetry girl,
The universe can’t wait to hear
Your words.