 I'll talk for like four hours. So I'll settle in. The bathroom's around the corner. Thank you to the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters and the Me Public Library for inviting me. This is a real treat. I'm in a beautiful town. You have this lake over here. Over here. It goes from over here to over there. When some people go, I know where I'm at. I'll be speaking for a while about how I became a poet. And then I'll talk about suggestions for writing poetry whether or not you're interested in that or not. And then I'll read some poems and then around 8 o'clock. I hope we'll have some questions and answers. At least questions. I've been trying to memorize poems. I think for some reason it's important. Catherine Goffel from Appleton, one of my poet sisters, says you need to know three poems and two good jokes in case you're ever stuck in an elevator. And so I think it's pretty good. So I was trying to memorize. Thomas Moore, he's an Irish poet, and he wrote this poem in 1805. And it's called The Last Rose of Summer. And it's kind of a dreary thing, but I kind of like dreary things. And I'm trying to memorize it. And I noticed there's this pattern, you know, grime and number of syllables and everything. And all of a sudden, how many watched Disney Land on Wednesday nights? Way back with Disney, Disney Show. Well, they used to have records that you could buy. And on the record, there was a tune called Sweet Betsy from Pike. La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. Stop, okay. And all of a sudden I realized that the words fit perfectly with that song. So it helped me to memorize. So let's see if I can do it. Last Rose of Summer. It is the last rose of summer left blooming alone. All her lovely companions are faded and gone. No flower of her kindred, no rosebud is nigh to reflect back her blushes or give sigh for sigh. I'll not leave the alone one to pine on the stem since the lovelies aren't sleeping, but I'll with them that here's a gesture. Thus kindly I scatter thy leaves or the bed where thy mates of the garden lie sentless and dead. So soon may I follow when friendships decay and from love shining circle the gems drop away when true hearts lie withered and fair ones are flown. Oh, who would inhabit this bleak world alone? Oh, who would inhabit this bleak world alone? Also, writers and artists and poets make connections. They see something made than made. They go through their brain and they go through the culture and they start connection. And I also realize that poem fits in the song Twas the Night Before Christmas. Twas the Night Before Christmas and all through the house. Except it didn't work exactly, but you know how mine worked like that. And the other day I was listening, probably everybody knows, stopping by Wood's on a snowy evening, Robert Frost. The mash theme? Suicide is painless? Whose woods these are? I think I know. This house is in the village though. My little horse must think it weird to stop without a farmhouse. Wee! I don't like such people that. But that's my kind of fun. I think some people in Asia make fun of Westerners because they can't entertain themselves in an empty room. And I've never had a problem entertaining myself in an empty room. Anyway, also poetry and music, there's a marriage between them. They cannot be broken. And when we first started out with poetry, there were songs. Let's say, the warrior woman from Shibuya then finally beat those beats from Manitowak. And people would sing the epic story. And if it rhymed, it was easier to transfer. And these are people who probably maybe couldn't read and write. But it's always been important. And my mother loved music, and I think I got most of my love of words and talent if I have any. From her, my dad was a grocer, wasn't really interested in music and stuff like that. But I remember she was one of my major influences. She's from Oklahoma. I grew up in Kansas City. She's from Oklahoma and she taught like ass. And we were Baptist, V-A-V-D-I-S-T-A, and she's not very educated, but read all the time and loved to read and loved to sing. And she would come across the word and she didn't know what she would sound it out. You know how like you're taught to sound it out. And she'd come up, let's say the word was renewable, okay? Renewable. And she didn't know what the word was, so she would sound it out and it would be re-nee-wa. And she'd write a song about re-nee-wa. And she would sing the re-nee-wa song in the kitchen and then take, grab me when I went by and we would dance to the re-nee-wa song or whatever it was. And I remember that. It was so delightful. And I didn't know that there were some families that didn't do that. Especially the Lutherans. Yes they do, they break out in song. So I think that I really find song. It was a wonderful thing. In fact I'll read a poem that I wrote kind of about that. What I'd like to do is talk a little bit and maybe read a poem. You guys going anywhere? Is it Melissa Ethridge's concert? It's over there. It starts in 730, so if you really want to. Oh that way? I get turned around with no windows. I get turned around sometimes. Anyway this is called Footlights. And for you youngsters in the audience I use a phrase that's called house stress, you may not know what that is. What is a house stress? People, women, used to wear them. Make them, use them to call patterns and build a house stress. Footlights, my mother danced to Charleston in her house stress that the kitchens sink. She sang out, take it easy, breezy up to heaven. She raves her arms to shake her hands and how the hokey-pokey of the solar wind swayed this way and that way in her blue moon flowered house stress. Ooh, the shuffle ball change of the cosmic soft shoe. She smiled at me, a universe downstage and pointed her open palm as if to say take it baby, easy now, breezy. I don't remember my mom. You don't have to clap after everything. This wasn't done. When I was in fourth grade no one else was in the house so I went in the attic, did you ever do that and look, look, look at stuff and I opened a couple of boxes and there was a black box like a black lacquer box and I opened it up and there was this beautiful golden boss orange tone, big book and it turned out that it was translations from the Chinese by Arthur Whaley and I don't know where we got that for it just appeared so I started reading it and I read Lee Poe and I read these poets from the 1200s from the 1100s and here's Lee Poe, he's drunk sitting by the river singing to the moon and I thought, I can do that I'm not the drunk part necessarily but I can see why people and he just came alive for me for some reason and so I started writing poetry and I wrote the world's worst poetry the key in the tree for you and me the hee hee hee officer, officer and but I kept writing it but I wrote it in secret because my dad wanted me to play baseball and it just, I told him at one point I wanted to be an artist and he said, it's from Missouri art don't plant no corn and I understood real quick what he meant but I got through high school but when I went to college I started reading, God help me Rod McHugh listen to the war and I swear that Rod McHugh wrote that book just I didn't know how sappy it was for the years later but I go, wow this guy really can't say and I started looking around at other poetry and I discovered hee hee Cummings and hee hee Cummings gave me permission not only not to use punctuation anymore but to play with words go food, go loom glory, go spar and weed and the words were somehow to be played with and I think that's what the poets do too so I'll read that and it's a poem called it's called Shibang how do you pronounce it? Shibang? Shibang? the whole in July and I remember I was at the LP meeting Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets up in Door County somewhere and we had just eaten lunch and another 200 people were going to be reading their poems and I was digesting and I looked out and it was one of the first nice days of spring and it was absolutely beautiful and I felt that I was in the right place that have you ever feel that this is it really where I belong? I wrote this Shibang these people, these place, these time of day these breeze, oh ain't they sweet these air to breathe these sun wet world these whole big blue green deal and then these nights these children moon, these stars on string these stars, these twang of things T-wang the whole life since I was playful I think I can get the then I met I met I discovered Marge Piercy who was very tough very tough Detroit housewife and she pulled no punches in her books and I didn't know that you could really just smack somebody outside the head with some poetry she's still one of my favorite poets and then Leonard Cohen somebody gave me I was on a bus from La Crosse to Kansas City and a guy got on the bus and he had picked him up and not just by the side of the road he got on the bus and he had a fly fishing rod with Leonard Cohen poems and he sat by me and for the next three hours he read Leonard Cohen poems to me and then I said that's wonderful and he said keep the book keep the book and it just Leonard Cohen stepped into my life also Richard Bryan Richard Bryan had some issues he ended up killing himself he drank himself to death he drank himself to death but he wrote a poem and this is it it's called we stopped in perfect days we stopped in perfect days and got out of the car I just love that we stopped in perfect days and got out of the car the wind lanced at her hair it was as simple as that I turned to say something and that's the end of the poem I tried to say something and he just broke so many rules there that it gave me permission to then I went through my South Gordali period but nobody understood any word or anything I said so I started to all of these were melting clocks it was like album covers it was really cool and that they're cool but I did have some wonderful teachers one was John Judson from University of Cross and a great great teacher and I studied for a while someone summer couple weeks with Thomas Lux who died about a month ago Thomas Lux and he he was an amazing teacher and he had to read so much that he had to say about poetry the other teacher is Mark Dodie and he's going to be in Milwaukee reading where is he teaching now Houston or Brockers Brockers on Newark he's amazing if you want to go to really good poetry reading go see Mark I get my inspiration from mostly three minutes I call them the three hours because I'm an old guy and this is the way I can remember them from reading if I read a good poem I read it and enjoy it then I read it again and again to see how they did that to me how they do them and the other one is regarding just sitting at the bus station and watching people come and go I like to write poems about when I was a kid and so I'll read this about regarding I was commissioned to write a poem has anybody ever been commissioned to write a poem it's not the way I work I sit on the poet's couch with a little nap and get him when they come by but you need to write a poem about John Muir's early childhood because in Marquette County where I live on County F we have a park John Muir Park and this is where he actually lived for 10 years and this lake Ennis Lake was where he was and so the national people from the park system came and dedicated it was great so I wrote this called the song of Ennis Lake the song of John Muir rise up early walk the path around the lake plant one foot and then the other quiet yourself listen to the song the silence the morning shush of the white pine needles the red-winged blackbird announces who's cat tail is who's the drumming stomp of the grouse on the hollow log the fog burns off the dragonfly flutters the honeybee sizzle on the wild purple bergamot the hummingbirds buzz the yellow fox love the sun sparkles on the water then silence your foot snaps a twig a raft of mallards quacks a squawk of sand hill trains goose heads bob up and down the bear claws sharpen on the hickory the antlers scrape the oak the musk red dives beneath the bank the beaver drags a sapling in its wake the swoop and splash of the eagle the swoosh of the kingfisher the tapping stocks the woodpecker bounces in its flight bluegills pop and waterbuck to the shallows as the sun slides west around the sky the shadows swirl and change to red and gold the shadows grow at moonrise the northern park skirts through the minnows the black bass boils the lily path the white-footed mouse looks this way in bath the little brown bath picks off mosquitoes the crickets tell the temperature is falling the bullfrog tunes to timpani then darkness the night hawk wheezes overhead coyotes yip and whine around the fresh kilt the great horned owl swivels its head and stares the endless rise and fall of the whipper wheel heat-lighting bursts behind the cloud distant thunder rolls the light rain on the marsh marigolds you walk you know how to slow yourself let go slow down to hear the song exactly as it sung the melody the harmony the tempo and the tone this song is never sung the same way twice you remember now the world is best taken in at walking speed it's in the silence you learn the song and you learn the song by heart and uh was that just once around the lake no that was 40 years of walking around lakes and uh you have advice for an emerging course other than you'll never be famous it's um oh you might pay attention pay attention that you've done they say that nothing's lost on the course nothing is ever lost the loop is stopped so I joined the WFOP and uh I met some people and WFOP if you're interested WFOP WFOP.org if you want to look it up correct 400 or 500 poets in Wisconsin they they are supportive they take you where you are and help you wonderful organization um and I think artists need to get together with other artists I think that's just really very important because believe it or not there are some people who aren't necessarily artists and they don't get it but uh and then in the last few years I've been working in the prisons and um very rewarding I go into three state prisons and do writing prompts for poetry with the prisoners and the poetry just pours ah it's just like it's right below the skin and it just comes out and I think it's because they don't have a voice and somebody said thanks for coming it's great that you give a voice to the voiceless first couple of times um I went I thought oh they really like me you know this is really great I'm gonna keep doing it and then I understood they would like a one recording player I mean it's just anything to break up you know it's and all of a sudden I realized it's not about me at all I would give them a chance to hear the other prisoners and they clap and holler at each other it's really a wonderful thing and this might consider being a volunteer in the prisons they need you I also wrote a couple poems about that experience and this is called time in time out you walk in and show your ID you sign the book time in 5 3 7 p.m. you pick up your badge, drop your quarter and pull your wallet put your wallet in you watch your keys and phone and the locker you place your notebook and pencils your belt and shoes and coat in the x-ray tub walk through the metal detector reclaim your belt and shoes and coat your notebook and your pen they stamp the back of your hand you wait till the door buzzes and clicks open you walk you wait till the first gate buzzes and clicks you walk you wait till the second gate buzzes and clicks you walk 50 yards under the umbrella of razor wire pass the towers, the shadows to enter the classroom block you stop and hold your hand under the black light you go in and sit down and wait for the dozen men in forest green to arrive you get the first writing prompt my gift you wait 10 minutes and one man comes to the microphone my gift he says and wipes his face and reads the wife called yesterday she said our baby walked my baby said I walk daddy I walk that's good baby that's real good this was my gift he says and sits down and when class was over I said goodbye to the men who lived there and walked through the first gate walked through the second gate the door I heard the buzzers and the metal clicking tight held my hand under the black light took my badge off crossed my name off time out 8.17 p.m. got my things from the locker put the quarter back in my pocket I put my coat on and I walked out these are writing suggestions for emerging poems both poems be a better poem how many of you write some did you still wonder maybe what it could I think it's important these are suggestions and they're all suggestions what worked for me and some other people but you go ahead and if you're going to write a poem in the world just pay your attention to me and go do it when you get to your inspiration get it all down right away just don't think about it just put it all down no editing then you start to think are any patterns emerging any rhymes internal rhymes and rhymes Mark Doty says that if you know exactly what's going to go into the poem then don't write the poems and I was a cross who said no surprise in the writer no surprise in the reader and I would suggest that here you have this is what poems look like before they get started and okay I'll send the raccoon as a little smuggler I don't know oh that's an inspiration then you decide to test the title and then you start to build the poem up and down and start to see if there's a pattern maybe it's starting to rhyme then you might want to actually choose formal rhyme Marilyn Taylor who was a poet laureate who lived I can't say it I was a poet laureate she writes poems poetry and she loves to be in that cage and come up with the perfect word and I don't have the patience to get to the perfect word I also think that the difference between novels and short stories and poems imagine a winter a novel is like the whole Wisconsin winter you know comes and goes in here and all these very good short story is just like one little weekend on Friday here comes a storm storm comes it goes away okay but a poem is a snowball and it's packed it's packed it's only meant to do like one thing just be direct or capture a moment and I don't think it's anything more than that making connections you start to write and then somebody said sit there with soft eyes and don't really concentrate on anything and let everything go through and and you'll start to see string theory is a mathematical thing string theory but anyway I have another theory that everything is connected with strings you just can't see them and but you can if you figure out that there is a connection a string the artist can kind of pluck that string and make music and that's weird part of the job is to find the connection pay attention so your job is to paint with words and to use all the senses you can it works out better for the reader also amateur poets when they start out they don't use concrete images and you really want to use concrete images so I would say don't use the word bird use the word somebody say something purple my car now I know I never pull that one but if you're going to paint the picture for the reader you don't say tree you say oh maple you know paint the picture there and it's your job to they'll never know you you can do that or not necessarily you don't say little girl you say Emily or whatever kind of thing sometimes amateur poets write about and a lot of the poems that used to be in the New Yorker they don't have images they don't do anything emotionally anything emotionally towards me and I always thought that I had failed the poems in the New Yorker but you gotta give me somewhere to stand as a reader tell me at least by the third or fourth line that this is going to be a poem about rat terriers okay you know how many channels you have at home give me on a channel we're gonna make something right now also check the verbs the verbs I think are the most important scaffolding structure in the poems here's a real quick exercise do you know what a verb is the boy went down the street okay what's a verb is there a different verb that you could insert to paint a more specific picture he stepped down the street he ran down the street and he if you can spell it dribble the ball see every time the picture changes and now thinking outside of the box the boy down the street he first stayed down the street in the prison I said somebody said it Tuesday down the street sorry for friends in the back he Tuesday down the street everybody is howl I go what's so funny about that he said that's the day you get out Tuesday is always the day that you get to go okay and so when this guy Tuesday down the street everybody got that just personally and that's how you can do it that's what I'm talking about sometimes Thomas Wood says there are on ramps the idea that got you into the poem sometimes you can get rid of those after the end of the poem because you might start repeating yourself he also said be direct he also said eschew equivocation eschew is okay eschew what does that mean eschew avoid equivocation felt like sort of I well kind of we used to call it pussy fighting there's still word you can use call it what it is say they did that not use word oh he also says avoid cliches like the plague it's the only way I can remember that rule of threes not a rule you know what alliteration is love like a lady she's losing okay our assonance is the sound of the bowels that repeat over and over again don't do it more than three times because the brain of the people for the people of the people by the people for the people is beautiful on the ear but of the people by the people for the people in case the people of the people their brain starts to go I see what you're trying to do to me and they get distracted really quick the ear loves three things and a rope for some reason and then repeating in church you sing the verse and then you sing the chorus and you sing another verse and the chorus can take on a different meaning at that point and that's what the Greeks found I don't know the Greek chorus used to repeat things and my brother's favorite what's called repertoire by the French and my brother's favorite joke is you know those French have a word for everything and repertoire just simply means just repeat it and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep it's just a simple device that really nails it tell the reader everything they are not stupid you like to read mystery sometimes they don't tell you who did it on the first page you wouldn't read the book they want to play along if you're an artist and you want to draw a circle you don't have to draw the whole circle am I preaching here you don't have to draw the whole circle you just draw about three quarters of it and people will fill it in I mean that's what they do and readers love to discover on their own so give them some wiggle room line length I think line should be about um oh one breath long I start to panic when I get to a far away from Martin and so in like you're reading a poem and if you just have punctuation or whatever you read about a breath's words the words and it just seems to be more human the breathing the heartbeat all of them remember Ronald Reagan some of us loved him Ronald Reagan was an excellent speaker I mean he brought thousands of people to tears one way or another I didn't mean it but when he was a kid in high school he took rhetoric and your grandma probably took rhetoric in high school and remember rhetoric is uh write about something or prove a point so you use these devices and you talk about logos tacos and ethos and those aren't the three musketeers they're your words but close logos means knowledge if you're going to write something have some knowledge and people love to learn stuff from books from poems and everything and ethos you have to show that you're sympathetic or have some kind of feeling to evoke a feeling in someone and ethos is sometimes called to a higher higher point like you probably have the most beautiful sunsets in rural in shibuya and you write this poem about how beautiful the sunset is in shibuya maybe you should sit down because it comes over the water most beautiful sunrises shibuya has the most beautiful sunrises I cry every time I use it most beautiful sunrises in the world and my question for you is so what? you know what I mean? if it's beautiful fine it's beautiful but sometimes you evoke a higher purpose so ronald reagan would talk about homeless people and he said well we've got 4 million homeless people and now we've got to take care of them here's one of them a homeless person or somebody and he's 8 minutes horrible and I feel sorry for these people and then he would say as a country we expect more from you and we need to do something about that and it really was it really helped I thought people ask me about titles I won't go on and on titles? yes I think you should have them and it shouldn't be a title like abstract number 249 I mean if you really want to go home and write abstract 249 but as an old guy I need to find these poems so I actually the one about raccoons has the word raccoon in it so I can look under r and actually find the poem again but there's all kinds of things you can do with titles you can turn into this cleverness it's like cuteness in junior high for a boy it only goes so far you know do you want to be clever but it gets old I'm not a Native American but if I write a poem about Native Americans something somewhere I don't have to be a Native American but I have to sound like I am it has to ring true and if it doesn't ring true then spell check is your friend okay it doesn't do everything but both have to be so careful because even one letter can change the whole it's called getting even one letter wrong can change the entire picture and getting each letter in just the right order can be as hard and sweaty work as crying old broads off your porch for six hours on an August afternoon there are only two mistakes but it somehow changes the meaning be careful the sound the sound is inside the words the poet uses the words and do you remember the movie Psycho the sharp scene what was the sound in the background it's a terrible sound so you probably wouldn't want to put that in the lullaby that you and you can actually choose and I swear the sounds in the word support chooses that that makes a difference between taping the poem together and nailing it it can really show craft when it sets that kind of tone I'll read this this is a poem I wrote for my son when he was young he would be able to sleep as we're going to go to the park tomorrow or whatever and he couldn't sleep so I I'll just read it milk from sleepy cows for Willie here my son today has done the cows of all come home drink this milk fresh warm and silk it's milk from sleepy cows drowsy cows now close their eyes to dream the orange sundown night night cows cream black and white come round from blue green hillside warm and dreamy smooth and creamy milk from sleepy cows rest well yourself the world will somehow swirl without you for a while sleep now deep down not a peep down they lie even at it they're mind lines you're not lost but that's in the word and I really enjoyed writing just from the sounds of the word I guess it's okay to lie to stuff you your hedge stuff you paint okay I'm going to read something I went to public school in Kansas City I was all excited about it I'm an older brother who loves school and I this is Wizard of Oz Country Kansas City and I got the worst teacher in the whole world for kindergarten it's called Apple in public school my kindergarten teacher miss smootz was colorless and starched always dressed in black and white not quite as beautiful as Margaret Hamilton in the opening segment of the Wizard of Oz I look close I believe she was made of Navajay I'm sorry she'd say to a child acting up I thought I was the teacher here but you must be the real teacher and teachers must have a classroom mustn't they I wonder where we might find one leading the pupil by the neck oh here's one now then miss smootz with time I class made up face down around the base you know it in the bathroom by the wrists with the towel or two if you cry she cried out you'll go to the principal's office and you don't even want to dream what goes on in the principal's office now do you one afternoon during recess I stood fascinated watching the second grade girls do skin the cats you want to skin the cats there somebody tell me the bars they flip over and then they flip back what do you call them I'm from Missouri you don't have a word for that I could show you skin the cats I can't change the tone watching the second grade girls do skin the cats they hang from the bars throw their thin legs up between their arms and land somehow on their feet on the other side of themselves upside down and almost inside out their flowers, skirts straight over their faces they looked like they were made of rubber bands and after a counter two they flip back and resume being second grade girls again I could watch them forever but in a moment I was torn from the scene pulled by my ear and marched back to the classroom I know what you were looking at said Miss Smokes sit here and put your head down on the table for the rest of the day think hard about what you did think hard and she stormed off muttering something about pink bare legs and white panties pink bare legs and white panties I never told my folks the next day I think I remember staring at the empty bars of recess and watching an apple with a bite out of it rolled down the asphalt past me from the jungle gym as it bounced by in a blur and I saw the hazy pink tumbling over and over there were many complaints about Miss Smokes and I heard she had been called to the principal's office but I'm not sure what happened there and I remember that soon however girls were no longer allowed to do skin and the calf it was kind of Miss Smokes must have been a real teacher I learned so much from her now every time I watched The Wizard of Oz and I don't have to think hard about this my favorite part is when right before those colors bloom that house comes down with that thud that's how I started my education and then in first grade I had Mrs. Miller who was my grandmother and your grandmother and you could sit in your lap and learn how to read and it was okay but I guess you're going to have the worst teacher at some point in your life in Guatemala I studied Spanish some and in the central district in the middle of the town La Plaza they would have children the children of the street and I didn't know how these kids survived and maybe they didn't but I wondered if they had the same dreams that I did like this called White Stallions the children on the street must see themselves in the greasy puddles of the porno in the sundown storefront windows in the luster of the shoes they shined must see themselves in the reflection of a customer's sunglasses in the tears of the old women in the shadow of the bus the children of the street must see themselves flying purple kites on sunny beaches dining with the family at your church riding White Stallions the children of the street must see themselves Kansas City I had two brothers I was the middle brother we were bad just like I said and they were singlets and that didn't but if they did my mother would have been a singer for raising three boys I lived on 50th Street and when we would screw up being a little boys everywhere she would threaten to sell us to the hot dog man and she would take anything she would make his hot dog and that's all she needed to say none of us had a word of soul to the hot dog the hot dog man he threatened to sell us to the hot dog man I had my chance mom whispered the hot dog man takes anything he'd cart you off no question to ask in summer my mother having had it up to here again with us three boys would run away from home we wouldn't notice for an hour or so until we got hungry or thought oh no this time she might be contribute she'd walk around the block a time or two we'd saw her sitting on the corner curb her legs stretched out across the sewer grate holding her face in both her hands to cry it was embarrassing to have the neighbors see her sadding there I was the one elected to collect her we were sorry ask forgiveness tell her whatever took whatever we did we wouldn't do it again promise I'd take her hand and bring her home one of us would hug her one would clean his room I'd do the dishes for the rest of the day we'd put away our wooden swords our wounding words we gave her peace we gave her quiet the words do I'd look around from time to time to make sure she remained we boys are grown our mothers contribute yet no one knows what really goes inside those hot dogs so I look out for the man who asks no questions I listen for that jangle of his car went to school and across Gunnison Clinic the emergency ward during college and it was an urban urban story urban legend and it's called in the living room in the living room the following day the authorities asked how it was she'd come to sleep with her dead husband for three nights running couldn't tell the difference she said yeah they asked but what about the smell well like I just said I apologize I apologize a couple more and then I'll have some questions if you're thinking about the questions you may have Baptist I screwed up when I was like in third grade in sunny school I screwed up so bad that the superintendent in a sunny school asked to meet with my parents at our house superintendent Sutherland demanded to meet with my family Wednesday night after supper he smiled briefly at my parents and focused squarely on me and what exactly were you thinking don't you realize you sinned against the Trinity Baptist church and the entire Eastman Kodak Company why for the love of God did you want to make baby Jesus cry that's a pretty big gun right I had to admit it was a split second decision on my part Justice superintendent was about to snap our third grade sunny school class graduation picture to grin and cross my eyes my parents were struck dumb when he produced the photograph in evidence your son has managed single-handedly to ruin our 1956 church family album tears well in my mother's eyes as she stared at the portrait of her white shirted bowtie boy surrounded by girls in the east her pastel pen forth mom started to speak but broke out in a laugh grabbed her stomach rocking back and forth trying clearly not to split a gut my dad glanced at the photo and guffawed that's hilarious he said and slapped my knee so superintendent Sutherland stood up when the laughter died down I took a breath and apologized I never intended to make baby Jesus cry my mother rose and suppressed another chuckle as she showed him the door saying I'm so sorry it won't happen again good night he left she shut the front door and turned to face me winked and pulled her dentures out tucked her ears up and crossed her arm it's a good mom you like her you like her a lot you like her a lot come in I'll speak to you more as for Laurier I love libraries if you're a librarian I love you you're smart you know how to vote correctly did he just say something political no he didn't I love librarians what do we do without them anyway you know how the teacher said we're gonna have a guest speaker come okay you come up with a question you better come up with a question so it's 6th grade 6th grade, a lot of questions are you haven't gone what's your favorite color 8th grade changes why don't you punctuate how come you use the moon so much as an image 6th grade you're a good friend but anyway it's called wealthy a very serious 6th grade girl asked me if I was wealthy well I said I have $22 in my wallet right now my purple truck has 250,000 miles on it I'm wearing clean and mended clothes I'll sleep in a warm bed tonight I've got my health my hands, my eyes my family and friends who love me and I can come here I'm going to graduate middle school to read poetry to you guys for free so yes I'm very wealthy wealthy indeed that seems to be kind of an old fashioned definitional wealthy maybe one more and then I have some questions if you are a young person and want to be an artist please be an artist give it a shot we need you so badly sometimes but we need you right now we need you right and I consider myself an artist just for the artist for Denise we chase the moon too hard sometimes and stumble in the stars that sparkle always blinds us we trip up tumble down we suffocate and scar us drown in floodlight we dance, we paint we one more time in space ourselves we make we turn, we tune gracefully we rise again we're artists grateful for another dreadful chance to chase the moon thank you very much