In the Classroom

The most potent sound in a university classroom

Is the click of a projector,

Followed by the soft rain

Of fingers on keyboards.

This soft, gentle falling

Not at all like the quiet harshness of knowledge,

Falls in arboretums, hallways and centers,

But never sounds in gardens or minds.

Knowledge is not soft rain.

Knowledge is a thunderstorm.

Knowledge is pounding skulls, the clashing of hearth and heart and heat

The clapping of disbelief is thunder, shattering the previous silent tense throbs of electricity

The tombs of puddles, rippling in the quiet rain is not

The rushing rivers of rolling waves overrunning beachways, roadways and pathways

That flood and overspill and still the torrents pour more in.

Knowledge is violent light streaking over skyways and twisting into new brightness, it is cracking and re-shackling the great powerful sky, its tightness

Knowledge kills

and fulfills and thrives in dark wide spaces like fields of hungry wheat twirling and thrashing in winds so harsh the earth shivers.

She shivers when knowledge roars and reaps and reeks.

Knowledge is so loud it deafens.   Knowledge is so hot it burns red hands on faces and sears and licks lips. Knowledge is so cold it burns stinging eyes and sears and licks locked blue lips.

Knowledge is more.

Knowledge exists outside, in the storms.

And she doesn’t exist. Because existence is a limitation.

And knowledge cannot be limited. 

Knowledge cannot be contained or restrained.

Knowledge isn’t given.

It’s earned.

Through blood and steam and tightening chests.

Knowledge is mother. Knowledge is father. Knowledge is screaming shouting hitting hoping heating whoring hacking lacking stuttering stacking stopping stalling seeking seeping soulsearing shaking making faking fulfilling stilling thrilling.

Knowledge is not a quiet rain.

Knowledge is.