James Hamilton

Book and Stone

Where thoughts run thin through book and stone,
False rhetoric creeps, silent, unknown.
My gaze drew down the murky veins
Of once great hallways, tarnished, now razed.

Stainless desks that each bore weight
Now parrot claims of “peace” and hate.
The rooms, then packed with logic’s kin,
Show stitched essays, their margins thin.

Where rubrics heap, stains mark the forms,
Untouched by pens, vacant, forlorn.
The chairs that scrape at turning hour,
Maintain a nameplate, a template, a power.

Where thoughts run thin through brick and site,
A paper triumph bought—so trite.
And from those doors, the future crawls,
Inept, in debt, unfocused thralls.