Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

What Am I Doing Wrong?

I wonder if I'm doing something wrong.
as an infant, I had colic
until I learned that it's not all about me, me, me.
am I doing something wrong?

I cut my teeth on live TV
Zorro was my mascot
I could carve a Z on every adult's belly
am I doing something wrong?

In kindergarten I discovered girls
girls that weren't my mother or aunts or sisters
mystery girls with bangs and braids and curiosity
did I do something wrong?

I lied, I'm still obsessed with myself
I get the colic now and then
when the world is living in my belly
am I doing something wrong?

An alchemist can transmute
success to failure, failure to success
I learned science in public school
am I doing something wrong?

My romances succeed, my marriages fail
the triumph of ideas over execution
skyrocket enterprises eventually fall to the ground
am I doing something wrong?

Doing it wrong teaches us to do it right
pain and failure are the final teachers
still I try and ask
What Did I Do Wrong?

If you sit in zazen until you bend
you are still

doing it wrong

if you write I will not pull the little girl's hair
on the chalk board, one thousand times
you are doing it wrong

if you basically write the same poem over and over
you will never get it right, or wrong

if you read Plato until his philosophy begins to make
some sense, wrong!

if you kick the gong around, a thousand lifetimes
right, wrong right wrong right wrong right wrong

I knew a poet once, he is the one that used that
phrase..."kick the gong around", I don't know where
he got it from, but I have my suspects, he would
get drunk on cheap red wine, or not always cheap
and read me his poetry, and tell me about a poet
friend he had, as far as i know he never tried to
get his poems published, was he doing it wrong?

I knew i was doing 'something' wrong when reading Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness' and the damn idiot explained in one paragraph (clearly and literally) why 'is' is 'is not'! I threw the stoopid book on the floor and vowed to never trust this man again! Hey! How can 'is' be 'is not'?... I only recite Sartre occasionally now, & only when I want to confuse someone who is 'sure' of something or the other.

Clay and I were sitting on the steps at his house on Richard Street in Dallas one day. He was telling me his take on right and wrong.

At this point in time, he always exercised his Yoga and played his flute on a small rectangular rug bearing the image of someone's idea of Jesus on it. I thought it was a bit over-the-top considering some of the people who walked into that house. Bible-Belter's and such. I wasn't opposed, just concerned about his personal safety - even though I fully realized at the time that it WAS a rug.

A discussion about that rug had led to the talk we were having on the stoop. He was talking about right and wrong. I let him talk for an hour or more. He finally looked up at me and said, "Are you going to say anything?"

I stood up and pointed one arm up and the other one down with middle finger flying on each hand. Then I walked towards my car to go get a bite to eat.

He grabbed me from the rear and spun me around and stared at me for a full minute. Then he said, "That's the only right thing I've ever seen a man do!"

I hugged him and got in my car. I was hungry.

What a terrific story!

"That's the only right thing I've ever seen a man do!"

Hah!!!