The Standard Is Gone Poem by Tony Adah

We went through a mill that time
Not like today
We had our back slates
Our guardians wrote cursively
On the blackboards
And we scribbled in our sates
Like the prowling marks of a scavenging hen
They put us in a hearth
The fire burned our sinews and thews
And our brains
They picked us with iron tongs
Beating us between the anvil and hammer
Of know-how
We had the ass
They had the canes
And we had the lashes
Now we are clean and pure like gold
But they have removed the standard
And the pant sagging folks
Are confused at what letters
Constitute their names.