Schoolroom

Why would you put children

into a pit of knives

or so the schoolroom

always seemed to me

not because of learning

but the shuffling unkindness

the shivs coming out 

when all the packed emotion

of growing

has no place to flourish.

Take any group

and throw them together

with no type of purpose

and see how they 

learn to turn against each other

to break out

into their own tribes

setting the unfortunates

on the outside 

where the warmth of the fire

does not reach. 

I find those lost opportunities

the real heartbreaker

and the time-wasting

pitilessness of it 

that taught us to build

all the walls we could think of

to keep each other out.