ICWAPAA #2

High School Isn't Harder On Anyone Than The High-Schoolers

No one was as confused as I was
when I found that box of glass eyeballs
in my locker. My high school
did not even have a prosthetics program,
so those eyeballs must’ve traveled
a long, long way to get there;
it must’ve been a long way to travel
to confuse me.

But I don’t like to look confused;
am I too proud? Or is it an older aversion --
maybe I don’t want to look weak
in front of the other high school students
lest they gang up on and eat me.

Those may have been idle musings,
but at the time they were enough for me,
all of a sudden every other human creature
was a danger to me and my eyeballs
(including the extra ones -- possession
being so much of the law back then.)

So I knocked over all of the tables
in Mrs. Caldwell’s third period,
and then I righted only one of them,
on which I stood and said to the gathering crowd:
That’s right! Look at me! I’m crrr-
aazy! And I’m a-gonna put your eyeballs out
one by one, so buy my one-and-only
brand-new prosthetic eyeballs now
before they’re gone.

And after that I was OK for a while,
on that ship of cutthroats called high school,
until I joined the water polo team --
everyone’s so mean to the water polo team.