held no meaning
save to induce
punishment, they
were meant to make
us change ourselves,
inscribe some
awareness of
our sins. 500 times.
Our hands clenched
the Bic pens to
punish the college-
rule paper, inflicting
pools of ink in
the Appollinaire-like
rain of words forming,
always the syntax
was declarative,
I WILL NOT ....
as if to inculcate
good behavior
through repetition.
The expectation
that grammar would
foster grace even
though as the hand
wearied, the sentences
cascaded, forming
a waterfall of illegible
letters, bunched cursive,
promises never
meant to be kept:
I will not talk in class
I will not throw spitwads
I will not horse around in the lunch line
everyday misdemeanors
recorded in multiple
scribbles, discipline
administered and
producing pages
of punitive grammar,
empty cages
of time spent
begrudging the
written word
and fantasies
of eradicating
the world of
"themes" and "compositions"
and eighth grade
books handed down
from World War II
by grabbing three
pens in one's hand
and scrawling one's
cleverness while
confessing one's sins
about talking
in choir, thankful,
in the end, that
a more crafty
and complex or
compound or
compound-complex
penalty was never
imposed:
"Upon further reflection I understand
that throwing spitwads at Randy Orwig
is not only a violation of school rules
but also a humiliating act that I would
never want returned upon me and, therefore,
I vow to check my conscience before I
chew dirty, filthy scraps of paper into wet blobs
and shoot them out the straws I stole from the
cafeteria, and, further, I vow to forever behave
in Mrs. Garvelink's class as well, which includes
refraining from setting thick wax crayons on
the steam pipes so that they melt into rich pools
of color and fill the classroom up with a horrible
stench,and also to stop talking out of turn and
talking in smart-mouthed fashion."
...sentences, which,
if scrawled 500 times,
certainly would have
crushed our desire
to craft primer prose
and would have made
penitent philosophers
out of every petty
lawbreaker, punk
miscreant and
rude delinquent
son of a bitch.
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