it took me almost a month. I wrote this last night in about an hour (and it might show). I'll probably rework it into something resembling meter, but this is the raw version:

Failing to clean, to speak, to pay
truth, faithfulness, honesty
getting away with those things young
children through punishing,
learning, or defensive cogitation outgrow
deriving that getting beats

getting caught out, or slipping under the beating -
oh those teachers promised hell to pay
the 'had to be her', 'sure wasn't me' others had outgrown
you thought you had too but in all honesty
the headmaster's long past lashing you. Punish
yourself. Cowering like the young

orphan cub, its mother having left her young
to a surrogate tyranny of liver and beets.
Food, like rearing, an abstained punishment,
a sentence long served before knowing what you've paid;
the abrogation excused by disdainful, indifferent honesty,
leaving you to wonder if you're not the first not to outgrow

the stupid, catchable lies, the accreting chaos, not to outgrow
the running and the sweating out of being young
and seeing that unflinching honesty -
such an antidote to memory, it beats
lying until for truth you have to pay
too - this hurts me as much as it punishes

you - chew on how you'd punish
back - surely this vengeance you long since outgrew -
no, still such thoughts extract a price - you pay
it between tasks, putting dolls in corners, young
again, no worker, by boss and crowd beaten
to culpability, despite all missed honesty.

Meet deadlines, keep a clean desk, perjure honestly
when called to account - to hold punishing
maturity - is that it? - at bay beats
the alternative - watching all the outgrown
fingers gently twist what was young,
the necks of all that for which you now pay.

This extracting chaos beats encroaching dishonesty
but it and I pay, an Atlas-like punishing
burden of what I've not outgrown, a hunch best left to the young.