Your World is Harder than Mine:
Instructions for Children Heading off to School
If your dream comes to life
and the houses
on our street lift themselves up
and the houses
on our street lift themselves up
and walk off
on their leggy stilts and find different
roosts
before you come home from school
roosts
before you come home from school
I will meet you at
the spot in case of fire
under the dying pine -- whose roots are not legs.
the spot in case of fire
under the dying pine -- whose roots are not legs.
But promise me:
if the gunning madman
appears in the schoolyard and your teachers
if the gunning madman
appears in the schoolyard and your teachers
shout the warning
Shark’s in the tank! Shark’s in
the tank!
pick up your dreamy head and run
Shark’s in the tank! Shark’s in
the tank!
pick up your dreamy head and run
on your stilty legs
to the herd’s heart.
Only I will tell you how to survive:
to the herd’s heart.
Only I will tell you how to survive:
Let the other children take the first
shots.
I will find you
under the pile of bodies -- alive.
I will find you
under the pile of bodies -- alive.
[I wrote this poem for my
children after a school shooting almost ten years ago. I consider it a brutal
poem, one written before we started telling children to run at the gunman. It
first appeared in Ploughshares, guest edited by Terrance Hayes.
It's now collected in the book Instructions, Abject & Fuming.]
