School Dreams

I dreamed I was in kindergarden again

Sitting on the floor

Trying to do puzzle number 8

Word on the playground was

You gotta do all 10 puzzles or you flunk

Maybe puzzle number 8 was my life

But I’ll never know because

Then it was dark

And me and Joe K. were wandering around the campus

After midnight looking for a place to play pinball

When of course we were in a blizzard helping push this guy

Whose 56 Chevy was stuck in a snowdrift

Which suddenly reminded me of the time when I was in sixth grade

And Nancy G. hit me over the head with her red purse at the

Spaghetti dinner

I should have realized it was a dream

When Dick Jane and Sally mugged me and took my Lone Ranger lunch box

As I was walking home but I didn’t

And guess what

Then I was looking longingly at Annette N. kitty corner across the street

Where we were both school patrols

Another clue that I was dreaming

Playing dodgeball in the gym naked

I know for a fact Miss Kokum would not have allowed that

But never mind because here I am singing the Pledge of Allegiance

To the tune of Smoke on the Water

While Walter Cronkite narrates the Vietnam War

And fortunately it’s my day to play on the jungle gym but

Puzzle number 8 looms unfinished in the corner