I was given an assignment once to write a parody of Ted Kooser's "Abandonen Farmhouse." I stumbled across his poem today (found here) and decided to redo this exercise. It was pretty fun!
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Abandoned Schoolhouse
He was a smart boy, says the quality of his test grade
on a pile of crumpled papers in the wastebasket;
a disciplined boy too, says the depth of organization
in a small locker; and a good, well-behaved boy,
says the worn seat of his desk
in the front near the blackboard, dusty from weeks passed;
but not a boy for studying, say the notebooks
with no essays and the unmarked workbooks.
A girl sat near him, says the nearby desk
covered with doodled flowers and the purple notebooks
filled with names of boys, and they had a teacher,
say the lesson plans made of meticulous thoughts.
Money was scarce, say the cracked test tubes
and chipped beakers locked in the science lab.
And some teachers too old, say the thick spectacles near the projector.
It was stifling here, say the dirty, sunless windows.
Something went right, says the empty room
on the sunlit campus. Well-laid supplies say
there was no natural disaster; the well-kept courtyard
says there was no bureaucratic condemnation.
What was the cause? Even the once ever-
present bells have ceased their ringing, leaving
us to wonder—until we find schedule on the wall,
proclaiming the holiday. Something went right, they say.
