WAR Poem: Crawl, by Patrick Carrico

Crawl with me through the wormhole between the dumpster and recycling bin and
We enter a world where

Amicable chubby men run preschools
And are adorned with sleeping snot covered children.
Their lot is to grow old while each season brings babies to replace the older children.
And the men mourn at night, praying over romance novels read by dim LED lights.
These novels tell of a world where murder and rape are the currency of a lonely boring
interconnected hegonomy looking for a hero.

The harmonies are refined in the grade school choir. From the street you hear every meal and
subject change celebrated in dissonance and harmony, melody and ecstasy and sullen swelling
minor resolution. Sometimes children stand apart, on some mission to the bathroom or
delivering milk, agape at the beauty of it all.

There are no band-aids nor organic snacks but all the fairytales warn of monsters in the
trees, where the fruit grows.

Only girls have extra curricular activities. On pedestals, they are clad in padded uniforms and
whispered mantras by college educated women. Teen boys sit on bleachers with open math
books and talk of simple things. They do not swear. No,
They do not swear.

First grade teachers silence the classroom so they can concentrate on their own studies;
volumes of worn trade magazines and maps are the table cloth for messy hand-carved
manuscripts. The boys and girls silently revere the teacher’s desk. They don’t understand it,
nor does the teacher, but maybe someday there will be a masterpiece. Lego towers fall like
Babbel and are rebuilt over and over. It is quiet here, I can think clearly.

Fall harvest;
the rocket ship failed to launch… well it cleared the hops trellis and the Maypole, but then fell on
it’s side and gasped fire. Better luck next year. I hope the monkey is alright, even though we
are not allowed to speak of him again.

Mr. Brown lost to Mrs. Woyzeck in the boxing match. When she smiled, blood streaked her
handsome teeth. She took the medallion and put it in the trophy case with the others.
The highschoolers teach the middle schoolers because we learned long ago, Middle School
teachers were mentally ill. The highschoolers are paid by owning the debt of their parents, who
have trouble keeping jobs for they are often to be found in clearings in the woods, respectfully
disagreeing.

All law and foreign policy is decided by the annual 3rd grade poetry writing contest. The most
cynical drunks (principals) have to look away when the results are printed. They look away and
mourn their wasted lives of desperate reason and ambition.

This is no utopia; those who can not prove an absolute need to continue schooling are cast out.
They work at this and that until they lose everything in a divorce and return to work at the school
for minimum wage (Minimum wage was set some years back by Moureen, the 3rd grade poetry
contest winner, as only clean clothes, no food. Food is to be stolen from work so no dares to
quit).

The children of biological difference pine to be like the ‘norms’ and unburdened of their
invaluable gifts of perspective and empathy. They didn’t ask for this and how they wish to be in
the bleachers with the boys, talking the repressed economical dialect of anxiety.
Oh and how there is War. Global, regional and personal. The many grief counselors help you
plot revenge with whiteboards and colored markers. Gender is brutally defined by which organ
hurts the most when struck. We nearly beat the Russians last year behind 3rd grade Monica’s
rhyming quintuplet “Socket Fuck.” Eliminating weapons from global conflict made everything so
much more brutal. The human bite recovery ward works around the clock and only the best
pupils can dream of working there.

Come to the forest with me and describe the world you are from to the idle parents. They won’t
believe you, but they’ll let you speak. They’ll ask gentle questions about IEPs and nuclear
weapons and pity you. And isn’t that the scariest part of it all? In your sick fantasy world, trying
to heard is the most vulgar thing you can do.

You may re-emerge from the dumpsters to your old world, and even speak freely of this place.
But who will listen? Who will care?