History lesson
Glazed eyes upon a flimsy piece of paper.
The thin, fickle texture telling
me mathematical questions.
A subject filling my soul with apathy.
“Two plus two equals four
just as two times two,”
the teacher’s voice drones on
to the uniformed class of glazed eyes.
My vacant eyes try to cling
to the firm, green chalkboard.
And the white figures dancing as more
are created with each flourished move.
One glance toward the president poster
along the thin paper walls, the echoes
of each historical tale sinks in
like a bedtime story.
Of drummer boys on open fields
with men marching to their steady beat,
only to lie upon the unfeeling ground
littered with the other blue and grey bodies.
Or of a boy on Kentucky soil
carrying logs that to build his cabin,
that would shoulder a nation
trying to rip its soul apart.
A history that draws me in
like the depths of the ocean,
and steals me away to the
vast, midnight heavens.