SHIFT
(for the students who staged the incredible protest Brendan and I were allowed to be part of at a high school in Brooklyn yesterday)

bottle rocket babies
locked in safes unsafe
buried beneath belittling
eventually explode

fuses aint but so long

besides they were
made to be tectonic
fireworks that scream
and star and spark
into the ether
and the ethos
of the
shovel-handed
who will someday
shake and wobble
their legs will wishbone
as the quo violently splits

and bottle rocket babies
the minors
will be miners
of their own fire
though always
always blamed for a fault
line they had no part
in creating