CPS

Location

 

Our lips taste of salt

as we sit at the back

of an overcrowded classroom.

Information passes through our ears

as heat waves.

 

Sweat stains have no place

in the classroom.

Updated books have no place

in the classroom,

but unused Smartboards have a place

in the classroom.

 

All we need to do is pass

through to the next level. That’s all

they care about—passing

through to the next level.

They treat education like a video game.

It’s easy to play

when they are not the ones who suffer

when mistakes are made.

 

Truth becomes fiction

and our voices are still not heard.

We are forced to sit

in the back of class

in sweltering heat

because we are wrong.

 

We wait so long for outdated books that sit on shelves and collect dust.

They cut teachers’ pay like kids cut paper in preschool,

but teachers have families too.

 

They don’t realize

that five year olds shouldn’t have to wake up to demolished and closed schools

that used to be their utopia,

that used to be their safe passage.

All rubble and boarded up.

They never taught

us how to make dreams

out of dust and boards.

This is more than a dream deferred.

 

They want us to be numb

and let them handle this,

but this is our education.

 

We won’t listen

when you try to say what’s best for us.

Don’t expect us to just sit here and count

down the days until graduation.

 

We will use every single one of those days

to make sure

that this education system is better

for students to come.

We will use these days

to make sure that five year olds don’t have to wake up to demolished schools.

We will use these days and every day after to get these blood sucking capitalists out

of our education system.

 

They claim that we don’t know

what we’re talking about,

but why should we trust someone

with a degree in money

to tell us

about our education? 

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