05-15-2014, 01:19 AM
So I got a ticket for picking a four leaf clover at the park.
I said, "They were just gonna run it over with the lawn mower anyway."
That's just the way it seemed to me.
No.
There are ways of doing things,
like at the park,
preservation and lawn care go together,
they go hand in hand, you know;
recreation is a privilege, and it has limitations:
What I was doing was being recreational
and taking it too far.
That's what I was told anyway.
People like to tell me things like that all the time.
And like what happened at the place we used to have in town
where you could go read poetry.
It was run by two old hippies,
and guys came in and read poems they wrote about throwing pipe bombs into the Pentagon,
as if this was 1968.
One night I was there catching plastic spoons on fire
and trying to suck some blonde girl's toes
as part of my poetry.
That was O.K.
But the next time I came in, around Christmas, and put a candle out
over in the corner of the place where no one was,
a few of their hidden cameras picked it up
and they threw me out.
The long haired blonde guy that came in with his guitar,
and said his guitar pick was worth more than my friend's life,
the same long haired blonde guy that I'd see coming in B. Dalton all the time
skimming through the same three Jack Kerouac books they stocked there,
had a dog with him.
The dog ate the Christmas tree the hippies had set up
and climbed up on the couch and bit me.
That guy and his dog got to stay;
but later when I put that candle out when nobody else was around,
that got the cops involved.
I couldn't just sit over by the road where the garbage was and wait for my ride,
the female hippy came out there and warned me about the cops.
And she said, "When you go into a store, do you
just pick up stuff and mess with it?"
I said, "Yep."
"You don't know. You'll never know what I'm about, what we're trying
to accomplish with the kids here.
Last time you were here, we got you on tape burning stuff.
We don't want that negative shit around here, man.
We're not about that shit, man."
"The world is negative," I said.
She rolled her eyes and went back inside.
The cops were coming, in case I didn't know.
I went back to the park after the four leaf clover incident
and decided I felt like climbing a tree whose branches stuck out over the river;
because of some girl I used to know I still think of trees as whos.
Well one of the branches gave way under my foot,
I was able to hang on to the branch I was pulling up on,
I know how to climb a tree after all,
and along came a P&R official in a little golf cart,
like what the cops pull up on at 3 in the morning in Manhattan when you're pissing behind
a dumpster looking out on Brooklyn Bridge.
"Violating park property," he told me.
"I didn't mean to do it," I said. "It hurts me to wound a tree,
I didn't mean it."
"Violating safety precautions, getting too close to the river,"
he said.
"All right," I said. Still up in the tree.
He was making me so anxious I started wondering if I could make it down,
like you feel sometimes trying to climb down from high in a tree.
I said, "They were just gonna run it over with the lawn mower anyway."
That's just the way it seemed to me.
No.
There are ways of doing things,
like at the park,
preservation and lawn care go together,
they go hand in hand, you know;
recreation is a privilege, and it has limitations:
What I was doing was being recreational
and taking it too far.
That's what I was told anyway.
People like to tell me things like that all the time.
And like what happened at the place we used to have in town
where you could go read poetry.
It was run by two old hippies,
and guys came in and read poems they wrote about throwing pipe bombs into the Pentagon,
as if this was 1968.
One night I was there catching plastic spoons on fire
and trying to suck some blonde girl's toes
as part of my poetry.
That was O.K.
But the next time I came in, around Christmas, and put a candle out
over in the corner of the place where no one was,
a few of their hidden cameras picked it up
and they threw me out.
The long haired blonde guy that came in with his guitar,
and said his guitar pick was worth more than my friend's life,
the same long haired blonde guy that I'd see coming in B. Dalton all the time
skimming through the same three Jack Kerouac books they stocked there,
had a dog with him.
The dog ate the Christmas tree the hippies had set up
and climbed up on the couch and bit me.
That guy and his dog got to stay;
but later when I put that candle out when nobody else was around,
that got the cops involved.
I couldn't just sit over by the road where the garbage was and wait for my ride,
the female hippy came out there and warned me about the cops.
And she said, "When you go into a store, do you
just pick up stuff and mess with it?"
I said, "Yep."
"You don't know. You'll never know what I'm about, what we're trying
to accomplish with the kids here.
Last time you were here, we got you on tape burning stuff.
We don't want that negative shit around here, man.
We're not about that shit, man."
"The world is negative," I said.
She rolled her eyes and went back inside.
The cops were coming, in case I didn't know.
I went back to the park after the four leaf clover incident
and decided I felt like climbing a tree whose branches stuck out over the river;
because of some girl I used to know I still think of trees as whos.
Well one of the branches gave way under my foot,
I was able to hang on to the branch I was pulling up on,
I know how to climb a tree after all,
and along came a P&R official in a little golf cart,
like what the cops pull up on at 3 in the morning in Manhattan when you're pissing behind
a dumpster looking out on Brooklyn Bridge.
"Violating park property," he told me.
"I didn't mean to do it," I said. "It hurts me to wound a tree,
I didn't mean it."
"Violating safety precautions, getting too close to the river,"
he said.
"All right," I said. Still up in the tree.
He was making me so anxious I started wondering if I could make it down,
like you feel sometimes trying to climb down from high in a tree.