::11:29:07::

::: Autodidact: (A Self-Taught Person) :::

We who teach ourselves
get "daydreams in class" and
"has difficulty following direction"
scrawled across every report card
by every teacher
from the time we are six.
Others find us amiable enough
but odd
our catalogue of quirks ever-expanding
as we putter away
in happy solitude
and all the wrong clothes
collecting our beloved,
slightly vulgar things
be they poems or insects or theories or roses.
There is no remission
of our affliction as we age;
in fact it grows cheerfully more pronounced,
though we may master
a few neat tricks of adulthood, or don
the proper uniform now and then.

I suspect we’re suspected
of getting away with something
by those who sat neatly at their desks
paying attention and following direction.
And I suspect they’re right:
we’re scarfing up the juiciest
meat of the peaches. We’re pinching
all the chocolates in the box
and eating only our favorites.
We’re gobbling up the peanut butter, sans celery,
and licking the sweetest cream
from every puff pastry. We know what’s good.
And for this we will not apologize.

And for this we will not apologize:
We self-teach because we are greedy.
We’re greedy because we’re born knowing
no other way
but to dive down without preamble
into to the most essential
part of everything, to
blunder over the velvet ropes and
maul every exhibit with our bare hands,
to feel the truth of them,
to ignore the directions on the box
in our madness to manifest
the thing in the box,
to cut straight through like a cold
laser
to the hot divinity
of everything.

Copyright Kristen McHenry © 2007

Written by: ~ Kristen McHenry