I remember,
When I sat in their desks,
The allure and horror over future pubes,
And my questions,
Mocked as naïve,
About why there had to be jobs, and grades, and government.
I remember the terror that my childhood would perish
Upon the altar of a civilization that people millennia ago invented,
Rascals, dullards, and prophets long dead,
No longer accountable to their bewildered descendants.
I remember it all now
As I gaze upon their troubled faces,
Wordlessly begging to understand a world not of their making
Any more than it was of mine.
I am mortified that I am now the priest in the pulpit.
I am now the indoctrinator,
The bureaucrat,
The enemy …
Working to fit them into the same obscene molds
I and my compeers were,
Because that's the way it's always been,
And because my race is ovine and unworthy,
That's the way it seems things shall ever be.