An old teacher
told my husband
straight up
“Our job is to not
teach but
to mold children into
positive contributors
to society”

So I followed these crumbs
dropped as gold plates
along the public school path
hoping to find Gurdjieff
on the other side

God knows,
my parents and educators
were never there to
show me the way

watching Kelly Komstoft cry
as her library copy of the
Three Musketeers is snatched
from her 8 year old eyes;
told she was too young
for that kind of work

knives out for
my twelve year old hands
holding copies of books
by DH Lawrence and
LPs by Tom Waits

the ruckus
when I told my parents
we would be studying
Dante’s Inferno in my
8th Grade literature class

disgust disguised as giggling
as I started to write
sonnets sung to whores
at age 14.

it’s just a phase, they said
when I stole the car;

snuck out of town
to see, of all things,
a Depeche Mode concert
(Hell, I was exploring
what passed for
Druidism at the time)

when I went wandering
through the nearby
industrial park late at night
bellowing some two-bit
top 40 hit at
the top of my lungs
because I was too trapped
and enraged to care, even
when chased home by
bored, would-be wolverines.

every night spent
breaking some minor, thoughtful
code of societal sanity
brought me closer to
a pillow in heaven each time.

2001

(Revised 2005)