LIMP WRIST Pushcart Nom: Kurt Brown

Here is another poem nominated from Limp Wrist:

APOLOGY FOR A HAPPY CHILDHOOD

It was not my fault. I had no say in the matter. From the beginning, my parents conspired to
subvert my ambition to be a poet: "No juicy material for him," they agreed. Like Roberto
Benigni's son in "Life is Beautiful", or little Gautama Buddha safe in the enclosure of his father's
castle walls, all ugliness and pain were kept from me. Death and the ephemeral were not my
playmates. When a puppy died, or a toy lay broken on the living room floor, my eyes were
blindfolded and I was whisked away and told that all would be well. And when the blindfold
was removed: it was! There stood a new puppy, and a shining toy, resurrected and whole, as
good as the original. Even better. I thought it was the original, that all things healed themselves
instantly, and from within. It was a joyous world, Eden without sin, without a fall, and I—its
little Adam-strutting around ignorant of apples, and sexless.

There were no clocks in my childhood, and mirrors were banished. In autumn, I was kept
indoors. When I went outside, it was always summer. The sun stood in the middle of the sky, and
before it went down I was brought back inside where lights burned merrily. And when I slept,
even my dreams were monitored, so when I whimpered or cried out someone caressed my brow
and woke me, only to rock me back to sleep again, singing. What had I to dream about! Morning
was a flood of light in which I basked, and I was fed with utensils made of pure gold. This could
go on forever, without tears or blood.

And then suddenly one day-when no one was looking-I wrote my first poem.

~Kurt Brown