Chris

So the problem is that many times knowing the meanings of words is not enough. One has to know what they symbolize to the person saying them and/or the person hearing them.

We tend to speak and write in code, in shorthand, in metaphor and allegory, if you will.

I had a friend Mary. Mary knew my bullfrog poem. She knew me. She knew stuff about my past. She knew how hard I had to struggle to hang onto my sanity.

She also knew me as someone who had always stood up for what I thought was right and fought the good fight. I think she got upset with me because she felt I had given up. Given up maybe even hope.

Well, I wrote a little poem for Mary. At the end is that poem.

First is the bullfrog poem and then Pretty Lollipops. I think I will post it in the kid's stories.

You know the significance the word carpenter can hold for me. That is, the fact that they tried to stop my brother from taking algebra because he wanted to be a carpenter, and that meant that he wasn't smart enough to take algebra. My father stood his ground. I would like to tell you he scored best in class, I don't remember. I do know he passed. And that had to really upset the school and their ideas of intelligence and careers. And, of course, you know what I think of "The Carpenter."

These things should give enough information to understand what I was trying to say. Maybe.

when i was

but a humble bullfrog

i would sit

on my bumpy yet secure log

and wonder

of that world beyond the dense fog

 

oh          how i long for those days

when i was never really tested

and my only fear was that

of maybe some day      being dissected

 

I think it was in the first or second grade that we first did finger painting. Albert did a tree. It looked like the big elm tree out the window. Sort of looked like a hand, with the wrist as the trunk and the fingers as the limbs. I looked at his painting and I could see the tree. I could never make anything that looked like anything, but Albert could. I thought it was a good tree.

 The teacher said it wasn't a tree. She wiped out his tree and made this thing that looked like a lollipop. She said that was a tree. Albert said it wasn't a tree, she said it was a tree. He said it wasn't any tree he wanted to make. She told him to make a tree like she had showed him. She then wiped out her tree and Albert made a lollipop and called it a tree.

 I told her it wasn't a tree, told her to look out the window. She told me it wasn't any of my business. I pleaded with her to just look out the window. I was either sent to the principal's office or made to sit in the corner. I don't remember. I don't know. I always spent a lot of time in both places.

 Albert never did any Art he didn't have to do. When it came to Art or Music, in later years, he took Music.

 When he was drafted to go to Vietnam, he went to Canada. When his name appeared in the paper as being pardoned by the president, I asked someone from his family when he was coming back. I was told he thought there was no reason for him to come back. When I asked what he was doing in Canada all these years, I was told he was an artist.

 As I write this now, it makes me cry. And I wonder why. Could it be joy for his long delayed happiness, sadness for his pleasure so long denied or maybe just my shame as an American?

____________________

 on the death of a bullfrog

 (For Mary)

"for children with their

Immense maturity dream."

- M.J.B. Teaching the Unteachable

 

 when i first met you     reality

you crumbled my world in a day

 

it didn't seem any mean feat

the way you reduced my mind

to a bowl of soggy shredded wheat

but even you    could have been kind

 

when you would not let me fight

i thought it rather unfair

i even mistook you for a nightmare

now i realize     you were always right

 

there's no honor in the carpentry shops

and trees             they're just pretty lollipops