Today’s Poem

Skipping School and Some Things

I didn’t believe in dumbing down,

not for the teachers, who one day,

reaching to the bottom of a mason

jar, had no answers for my questions.

Remembering Plato or Socrates

was easy. I also drank the poisons

of my day and called them Hot Damn.

Girls from other schools liked

the way I leaned. My best friend

ran internet service provider

during our senior year, when

we weren’t sitting at the coffee shop.

I skipped school, drove over

the river into St. Louis’s Washington

University. A little man lectured

on Darwinism, this you couldn’t get

in Waterloo, Illinois. Keep crawling

you’re not out of the cave yet.

-Jason Braun