Archive
11/19/08 - (2)
Small Stages
Because when he was young, he craved attention, Would act out, mischievously, to get it, Despite being introverted, tongue-tied,
Creating great hurricanes of tension, on small stages — Tempests in tiny teapots — among his classmates, Earning him an hour of solitary confinement in the cloakroom,
At Glenridge Elementary, from his unamused teachers, Or, for more heinous infractions of the school's social codes, Dismissal from the room, a trip to Perry B. Henderson's office,
Where the extra-tall, very bald principal, with the scary face, Would escort him into his terrifying inner sanctum, With a vast array of synchronized master clocks,
Have him bend over, hands against the wall, And proceed to beat his butt — thwack! thwack! thwack! — With a hard, wooden yardstick, until he cried...
Because when he was tongue-tied young And punished, repeatedly, for his calculated acts of distraction, Which disturbed the order of the universe barely at all...
Because that pattern of juvenile civil disobedience Followed him, to the private boys' school, Causing him to spend many Saturday a.m.'s, in detention
(While his friends were sleeping in, Going to bowling alleys and ice-skating rinks), Where he'd atone for his trivial sins, by scribbling, on blackboards,
A thousand times, at least — scribbling, erasing, — Verses by Longfellow, Holmes, Riley, Making amends for blowing "farts," on the crook of his arm,
During those compulsory attendances of chapel, When he'd be coerced, under threat of pariahhood, Into singing "Onward Christian Soldiers"...
Because when he was young, then less young, then older... Now, at sixty-seven and quite old, Having spent forty-five years as a slave to his poetic pen,
He's discovered that his boyhood craving for attention Never faded, rather took a different course, Forcing him to act out on the small stages of notebook pages.
11/19/08 - (2)
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