POEM - Badger, Buffalo, Cap, Gown: 1989

I cared more about

The batman keychain

Than the diploma

I worried more

About my camera

They wouldn’t let me keep

Than following directions

The fact

That Barz

Got them to put “Barz”

On the paper

Meant more

And

Only-a–forty-five-minute-graduation

Then done

Meant the most

Was I still a Badger

Awakened in those Sonoran desert hills

Or had the Buffalo

Taken over my heart

In the suburban asphalt metropolis

It turns out

I cared for both

But never affiliated

Always happy to play the outsider

I had learned nothing from the actual school

The scheduled classes

And the daily minutia

All the important stuff

Was extracurricular

Stacks of cassette tapes

Frisbee in the Quad

Forensics competition freedom

What a kiss feels like

Or a fist through the heart

What friends can ask you

And the meaning of fair-weather

What beginnings and endings look like

How to ditch without being caught

The joy of driving nowhere in particular

Saving a life

Infatuation

And never letting homework get in the way

Of anything else