no hair covering my eyes.

i wasn't Sampson by any stretch
being too small and young
and without a full and flowing head of hair,
but still my dad grabbed me,
hippie as i was,
forced me into his car
and drove off
headed straight to his favorite
perhaps only
barber
and there i was given no choice about cut
or trim or color
i was told to sit in the chair
and thought that i was lucky it wasn't
electric
and then again that
i didn't have to wear a dunce hat
like i once did in second grade,
oh, i remembered Miss Barnes,
all right, and how i was forced to go to the
front of the class
to the blackboard
where i found her piece of chalk,
that was the only piece i was thinking of
in second grade,
before writing "i will not..."
and i can't remember exactly what was
my awful transgression
or perhaps i was simply being a willful boy
as we did often try to be
but i wrote
over and over
top down
bottom up
in a sort of white scrawl
on her hard green surface
until she was satisfied
and i was tired
and the stool in a corner of the
old classroom
waited for me
and i sat on it
while she placed the
dunce hat on my little head
which had short hair
and now my father was trying to
imagine what i must have looked like in
second grade with the buzzed flat top,
a bit of wax to the stiff front hairs
so they stood ram rod straight to the sky
but i was no longer in elementary school
now being 21 years old and a freshman in college
yet he had his way
as i looked around for the stool
and the chalk and Miss Barnes,
who i heard had moved to Japan
married to some guy with short hair
and my father cast a big shadow
in the barber shop
from which it was hard to see the light,
even with no hair covering my eyes,
and i felt small
in the big swivel chair
with the red faux leather seat.