Passing Marks

Into this school passing, as small as a life,
We came to give and leave our reasons,

To pledge allegiance, unflagging,
Through all to wife, to divorce our strife,
And graduate

In guilt upbuilt,
To betray, at last, our treasons.

For him, one by one, small
Whimpering & red

We lined up in the hall
Alone by our selves
Together in this,

To mark how unheeding we remarked our own heart
Beyond the scope
Of his stethoscope,

How well was all we never saw
And how ignorantly tall
We'd grown for that bigger fall:

Our bandages were the wound
He wanted to confess,
So undressed

And then, then I confessed to you.

"Love is a lie & time shows it,"
The professor said, shaking the red bruised paper
Of his inquisitive head.

"I confess, I reason:

In the allergic blue season
I was throughout
But yours by tears
I'd cried in treason.

Tears I professed
Time taught me were treason--
If," I sneezed,
"If I could give you a reason..."

"Love is a lie that doesn't know it,"
The professor said, drying the furrowed
Flag of his condescending head.

"If I could give you a reason
I wouldn't regret
That all my years
To myself were treason...If,"

I stammered, "If I could give you a reason,

Time, my dying professor, would not fail me,
But pass me onward past forgivingly,
Surrendering white-triumphs from his remarkably torturous head, crying,


'Love is a lie that shouldn't know it,
And tears but the attempts of my essays failed to show it...

If,' he stammered, 'if I could give you a reason 
I wouldn’t treason'."