What I Want to Say

Well, I was playing, see,

in the shadow of the tabernacle.

I was decorating mud pies

with little brown balls

I found scattered on the ground

like nuts, or berries.

Until some big boy came walking by

and laughed. “Hey,

don’t you know you’re puttin’ goat doo

on your mud pies? I bet

you’re gonna eat ’em, too!”



That day I made a major error

in my creative life.



What I want to say is this:

I liked those little balls

on my mud pies. I was a sculptor,

an artist, an architect. I was

making pure design in space and time.

But I quit

because a critic came along

and called it shit.