One's Old School

K through Twelve, it's called. Students and teachers walk the halls. From beginning to end behaving like they should Or else. . . One knows that the attic is filled with cobwebs, of course, and dusty musty old textbooks discarded lessons and copies of one's grade reports. But the basement . . . One knows there's a cave below the boiler room filled with old projects and paraphernalia. A tomb lined with damaged models: plastic skulls, plastic brains, and plastic hearts. An abandoned asylum for the malformed and the maladjusted, the deformed and the defective. Stalactites drip growing steadily down, glowing and sparkling oblivious. The floor is soft and powdery, damp cold decades of ashes and dust where one lands when one falls. Strange crystalline music of dark nested spheres repeats. If one is able and not wholly broken then one may wander through, past the poor wretches who line one's way . . . If one can wonder or wander at all after one's fall then one reaches the mouth of the tunnel and crawls up to a barn door in the wall. A light shines through there where one may stare and beyond others' noises echo busy buzzy cheer?? Once opened, it reveals the shopping mall where graduates sell Their wares. "Free dessert" is being given away. Dutch apple pie of several varieties, some sugar free and some without fat. If one buys that. A celebration seems to be in the air Halloween, it seems, and behind scenes the revelers come near. From the cave and dark dungeon they parade in masquerade. Singing in unison. Coming forth, as one, to get their share.