I need to do my homework. 

I need an hour 

 

I need to spend the duration of a sunset 

 

in a poorly-lit room on my keyboard clacking and clacking and clacking away 

 

until each finger can reward me with a a confused mass of zeroes and ones lining up to give my optic nerves the likeness of a character in the Latin alphabet

 

with which I can create a labyrinth constucted from the same damn 26 letters and spaces and periods and semicolons 

 

so that 

 

to us 

 

we recognize the words that compose the ancient lexicon of this language 

 

But not just words 

 

W-O-R-D-S that have been segregated into prepositions and conjunctions and past participles and INTER!jections

 

until they're subjugated just enough to build phrases and clauses and 

 

from those 

 

sentences and paragraphs with transitions and thesis statements that I have been trained to WHIP words into making for me. 

 

I'll call it: "an essay". 

 

And then I'll tell my machine to ink it onto paper 

 

and then I'll pierce my work with a staple 

 

and turn it in. 

 

 

 

And if he doesn't like it…

 

 

 

If the keys I tapped the night before didn't successfully capture the capricious stream that is human thought 

 

(or if I didn't capitalize 'Africa')

 

His lips will pull into a frown and his scribbles will represent an Arabic number with a lesser numerical value than I will deem satisfactory 

 

Because 

 

if the mathematics says so 

 

I'll be compensated for my keyboard-tapping with the second letter of the alphabet and not the first 

 

or the third and not the second 

 

or the fourth letter

 

or—God forbid—the sixth. 

 

The man will kill me with a fffhhhhh. 

 

Because if I, low on common sense, 

 

Apply to a reputable university 

 

A better-known variation of an institution that has been trained to open my mind by cracking my skull 

 

and if I bleed hard enough and long enough 

 

give me a firm handshake and a piece of paper with my name on it in a font from the Dark Ages 

 

that will help me crawl out a king's ransom in owed finances 

 

by spending the rest of my mortal existence doing some thing I say I love while I cheat on our relationship with a salary that will let me feed me and my wife and maybe an 16-year-old while he's clacking away on a keyboard until these four limbs can't earn dollar bills anymore 

 

 

 

but will still ask me, "Why should WE accept YOU?" 

 

 

 

If I decide that after my high school education I should stoop to a higher school education 

 

But my paper has a fffffhhhhhhh

 

A man dressed in a suit that comes with nuclear launch codes 

 

Can take a look at my photo and hit me with a missile with a shake of his head. 

 

Then I won't go to a good school. 

 

Then I won't get a job. 

 

Then I won't be a productive component of a reality built by the few on the graves of the many 

 

because then I'll be poor. 

 

And then I won't be happy