Oh boy, let’s do some work-shopping. I don’t know you, and if I’m too hard on you, you’re always free to tell me to piss off or to just ignore me. It’s your poem, and my own writing hardly gives me any credential to critique another. That being said…
Ocean-envious of the sixteen-year-olds
streaming coolly onto campus
on a mid-week morning,
but why envy?
I am to them as a reptile is
to a sobering amphibian.
I suppose it must be the manifest memory
conferred unconsciously
in the Morse code of their steps:
There’s a lot here that is confusing. Right off, I don’t know what “Ocean-envious” means. My first thought was that the ocean was envious. I’d never considered the ocean as a body of envy, so that was interesting, but it didn’t work with the rest of what you said here. Then I thought maybe you mean there is envy as grand as the ocean.
I don’t know what a reptile means to a sobering amphibian, so this comparison to what “I” am to the sixteen-year-olds, I don’t know. Could be that an amphibian is sleek while a reptile is crusty & scaly? Why sobering? It may be too far away, or it may be that I’m not the greatest reader. It could have something to do with the ocean you mention above, but then the rest of the poem doesn't keep that thread.
The last three lines of this stanza are really good, though I do wonder if using Morse code to describe a clickity-clackity sound is already a bit used, but at least you're also using itto convey a message, so you might get away with it.
when I was their age I met new peers
who saw not with eyes,
but with kindred words;
experimentation was refreshingly inconclusive;
I fell in love without a voice
and learned about the great repression.
My part in all of those lives
is ineffaceable.
I think the transition between these two stanzas can be made more subtly. You’ve told us that it’s a “manifest memory,” so now you can tell us that memory without saying, “here’s the memory,” which is a loose translation of “when I was their age.” I say that, and then I ask myself, would I get that this is his memory without something to tell me? Is this a collective memory? I think it would work better if it were a collective memory.
What would you think of taking this stanza out of first person? Not sure without seeing it, but this might be stronger if you focus on the memory itself without being so personally narrative. Maybe you could move it away from perfect sentence syntax, as memories exist in this imperfect way, this partial and disjointed scenery of a mind.
Barely a decade ago
and already I stare into space.
Enough.
Life is fair and the present is fine;
the present
is superior
for it fathers all conjecture.
I like the first two lines here. Sounds like you’re already starting to feel old. When you say “Life is fair and the present is fine;” I take that to mean life isn’t fair and the present isn’t fine.
I have no idea what this last line is about. Is conjecture the best word for what you’re saying? I don’t know because I don’t know what you’re saying. It sounds to me like you’re saying that you’re trying to fool yourself into thinking you’re glad you’re not a teenager anymore. You’re “glad” you’re, what, 26(?) and that you can reach some conclusion or consensus. (by yourself?) Umm, ok. Is that different from being 16?
Label that time:
"before the pause",
and leave the desk
unlocked.
What desk? Was there a desk? What was that about? You’re an English teacher at a high school? Why is the comma outside the quote mark?
