Kids don't go to school anymore.

We don't learn math.

We don't learn English.

Kids learn truth these days.

Because kids don't go to school these days.

We go to empty parking lots, innocent and free. 

I've seen them, packed in tiny cars by the dozen,

Clown car catastophy, nicotine, dopamine.

Lessons taught by the highest to the youngest.

Upperclassmen are always way up in the ranks of the dank.

But we follow because they smile, or because they laugh, or because we can.

Anything is better than algebra.

So bring it on, they say.

Bring on drugs and drinking, bring on strip games and poker faces.

But wait, here come the consequences, cops and winces, calls to mom.

I'm sorry.

And what about Kai, splattered on the road last fall, his vape pen 

Explosion imploding our world when his head on collision hit us all head on?

We just breathe deeper, chug longer as we chug along.

Most of us will make it to adulthood through Mary Jane and acid rain.

But there are always the unlucky ones. Suicides and worse.

Convicted or afflicted with lung cancer, kidney failure,

Kids to raise before we even have bills to pay.

Kids don't go to school anymore.

Kids go to heaven, or prison, or the suicide ward.

Kids don't go to school anymore.

Kids go to parking lots, innocent and free.