Paging Miss Holstein.

I was working near the door
of the courtyard to get some fresh air.
The school was stifling in late June. I couldn't imagine
how uncomfortably hot it'd be if the students
were cramming the halls and classrooms.
Still, I wished they were there.
Maybe that kid who was reading
Dostoyevsky would walk by again
and I could ask him how he liked it.
We've all got a little Raskolnikov in us
whether we know it or not.

Teachers had been passing under my ladder
en route to various yearly de-briefings
in their casual clothes
hoodies and jeans and college T-shirts
as I laid my pipe in sweat-soaked denim
and a dusty pocket Tee.
A few of them were sitting outside
on a bench in that courtyard
talking about what they'd be doing
with their summer vacations.
None of them listed any books they wanted to read
let alone write.
A tenured man mentioned something about a time-share.
One young brunette not more than three years out of college
said how she wished she'd never have
to grade another paper or explain another poem again.

I squeezed the trigger on the electric impact wrench
the kind that auto mechanics use to remove nuts
so the loud buzz would drown them all out.
On lunch break I'd been reading about Hemingway's
World War I experience in "A Farewell to Arms";
The rat-tat-tat sound transformed my impact wrench into a machinegun.
Unfortunately, the battery died thirty seconds in to my venting session.
All of the teachers in the opposite trench
were gone when the imaginary smoke cleared.
Noise always did the trick.
I'd learned early on in my apprenticeship
how to get rid of unwanted guests:
noise, dust, or a whiskey-soaked tongue.
Some people don't know how good they have it.

Behold the green-eyed monster toting his powertools.
He knows he could do it better.