Poetry

Lorie Shaull photo

By

Ben White

The Gutting

It is so close to being complete –

Education flayed, filleted

And stripped of the Jeffersonian guts

Leaving ifs, ands,

And rifle butts

To replace music class,

The Arts

(Fine and Industrial),

Basic governmental civic courses,

And the sources for young minds

To find an identity

When the backfill

Is an affinity for power,

Destruction, and brutality

Seeking a reality that doesn’t exist

While self-image insists on proving

One’s inclusion

In the disenfranchised facts

Falling through the widening cracks

Where consumers

Replace citizens

And charge their way

To social defeat

And it’s almost complete,

So the only thing schools need now

Is additional funding –

Not to help

Develop healthy minds –

But to buy weapons

And arm killer-teachers

For the protection

Against the products

Of their under-funded

Already gutted

System of education

Ben White

Author of the books, Buddha Bastinado Blues and The Kill Gene, Ben White thought he was a poet, only to find out he is not a poet at all. He is a witness. What he writes is testimony.