The look of this black and white movie
is softer in the flurrying dark, the slip of
restless hands from one perch to another
displacing sound & shadow.
These are still kids, shucking husks.

My focus is on the figures
doing love and hate in tableaus
at the end of this vision’s corridor.
This is an emotion’s war, a film.

A series of red dresses. The third time
and the blood no longer tastes like cherries
in our young subconscious. But attention
is short-changed, given to teens.

There now someone not dying
a small child, in another red dress
looking at me from the wrong end
of a kaleidoscope.

It’s all balled up, walled off
by the pressure
of my eyes meeting hers, and
outside of this space is a myth.
There is only surviving now
and out-pacing the next minute
which will show her a gun.

Standing on death’s knoll still
tolling with shorn names. Some
blew out the back of Jewish heads
along with their brains.
A body count, noted by
my neighbour’s gentle green pen
and piled with fire
is her feet’s support.

Laughter drags in, through
brick pores: I can’t keep the old
legends, the students lounging in
plastic seats, out. The movie stops.
A few are caught looking starkly
at a red-washed wall.

The teacher plows the aisle, flicks
on the light with deepening zen, thinking
of her skirts dripping violet into her closet
hinting at some cinematic fate.

No prayer, but time for blinking
away the grit of equilateral crosses
with wings that irritate the eyes.
Soon fluorescence eats up
the inches of this new classroom.

First girl smiles, girl permits it
and the spill of a little more fabric
onto the screen reddens it a little
longer.

Writing is harder today, distracted by
the small red rags blooming from my fists
and tangling with my pencil.

Essays screaming [i]blood,
Blood, blood.[/i]