I’m following an earworm
I think that’s what they call it
or brainworm maybe
wandering in mind thinking
thinking is the meaning of life,
an odd idea now that mind
is a side effect of living
the noise in a machine.
But this reverie of boyhood:
of being pulled by an ear
called out for daydreaming
flits like fly in my head:
“Snap out of it, abusing time is bad
can lead to addiction
delusion, politics, love, war,
an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.”
“What’s wrong with thinking,” I asked and got:
“You don’t know your mind as well as we do,
don’t think anything but what we tell you
and pray, pray unceasingly!”
I put the most precocious face on and say
“You know, Sister, Descartes said
I think therefore I am and there’s a form
Ellis calls stinking thinking
which is really bad,
Buddha treats it with Zen
Jesus cast it out with demons,
Don’t you follow him?
Don’t make me do arithmetic
after the second coming
math won’t matter
transformed as it will be
by angels
into cotton candy clouds
and the bliss of kids
will go on forever
Robert Frost will laugh with God,
be reminded, death comes
like a thief in the night
you may be taken in your sleep
in a twinkling of my eye!
She yelled, “It’s a hell in your head!
You daydream
therefore you’re damned.”
This was fifth grade class
nipping the altar wine she was
an altar boy told me,
but nightmares are made
of what she did last
“You know what we do
with boys who daydream?”
She pointed to a larger than life
bleeding Jesus on a cross.
back of the room…
Now that, pissed me off,
“See you in hell, Sister Abishag!”
She taped my mouth shut for the day.
At home, my Mom asked why I was sad,
“I don’t know, maybe I talk too much.”
She got a call from the nun who told her why.
Hearing the tale, bold Rose replied,
“My boy isn’t bad,
if you said that then you are a hag!”
She put down the phone with a laugh asking
Butter Pecan or Rocky Road what shall we have?
