The Poetry Teacher’s Final Assignment

I said
You’ve been studying poetry for fifteen weeks and now
To show me what you’ve learned
You have to write your own original poem.
Show me what you’ve learned.

Ben wrote
     Life is good
     more often than it is bad.
     Death sucks.
     Even though everyone is unhappy a lot of the time
     in almost every life there are moments when you realize
     it’s better than being
     dead.
     And even though death takes you away from all the parts of life that suck,
    Death still sucks worse.
    Life is still better.

I said
“You’re just saying it. You have to make me feel it.”
He painted it on a rock and threw it through my window.
He was aiming for my head.