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.

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.

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!”

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 ****.

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

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.

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

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.

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.