No more pencils, no more books....
A light coating of chalk dust,
still insulates my steel gray innards.
My mahogoney face is lined with
times cruel marks which are quite simply
all the etchings of juvenile hands
scratching various initials
in rememberance of their long
and tedious hours chained to me.
With an inkwell for an eye,
I saw braids bent in concentration,
and crewcuts nod off to sleep,
The echoed drone of boring teachers
still resounds within the hollows
of my storage space below.
So often my mouth opened
to discharge bright books of knowledge
regurgitated text from so many years ago,
several rulers graced my platform
taking measure of their young lives
while large pencils often stenciled
fresh ideas on goldenrod,
yellowed paper holding classwork,
then hand fed to my wide gullet,
Legs of wrought iron most fancy
helped support the learning masses,
feet wrapped tightly round the curlicues,
till my paint was worn away,
Alas most of my peers languish
in the landfills that are dotted
all across the land kids learned of,
on the surfaces we offered,
And so many of the students,
who daydreamed within my confines,
are now sealed in lid like boxes,
that resemble mine above,
buried also in the landfill,
where they store discarded people,
but the youth we shared I cherish
from this basement where I moulder
in a school closed by progression,
till like them I rot away