following instructions
oh how embarrassing! my "life story" is predicated on "I will not!" I'm the little boy who played in the flower gardens; who learned Portuguese by talking to Brazilians; who sneaked out of the kitchen, out of the backyard, out of the little town, to play in the brush and wilderness; who found a cave and explored it; who picked three red peppers and bit into them all at once; who built a tree-house with help from another six-year-old; who lay in his hospital bed dismayed after doctors allegedly told his father that he must not run, jump, climb, ride his bicycle fast, swim out into the ocean, and thought "f*** you! I damn sure will!" and did; who walked home along a different variation from the safe way home every day and thereby wandered into every neighborhood he'd been told to stay out of, and learned about factory workers and women who flirted with them and warehouse workers and truck loaders and truck drivers and people who ran small markets; who even made a few centavos by running errands for working people in those neighborhoods; who tried and tried and tried to build a raft that would carry him down the river that ran past his house; and so forth. I'm the little boy who never outgrew "nunh-unh!" sigh. but I'm also the little boy who learned English by learning and following the rules of grammar; who learned to spell by memorizing; who learned math by learning and applying the rules of logic; who may have ridden his bicycle way out from where he had been allowed to go, but always rode it near the curb unless he had to go around parked cars; who loved streets without curbs, because then he could ride anywhere; who didn't talk to strangers unless they talked to him first; who started college in a flattop and dress clothes; and lately, since congestive heart failure, follows every instruction a doctor gives him. thank goodness for Lindy who has found a zillion low sodium or no sodium recipes so I can eat chili, lasagna, forty-eight different Italian foods, most of whom I'd never heard of before CHF. thank goodness for the poets of Los Angeles who tempt me outside the bounds of English as she's meant to be. thank goodness for an imagination that sneaks me out into the wilderness of ideas beyond where I'm spozta go. turns out I'm damn good at following instructions, and some of them are good for me, or at least for my health. but the first rule for a poet is "don't follow instructions too well."
No comments:
Post a Comment