#jerron tables

OH my TV Screen yep yep crystal sheen he teach the preach but we reach for peach He points direction, but we drink the bleach crap

She pull the pork mama She pull the son She got the rips on the run She ripe the type, but that she spawns the grime Alll the tvs that tap into our waiting minds

Who gotcha boots. Botta boots. boots.

Scoots in the suits. Inna suits. suits.

Who’s gotsa swiiing inna me me me

Downtown to sing mama blue decree

Boots in the roots. River roots. roots.

Boots come a boots inna boot-boot-boots.

  Where mama stare? Over…

I rocked. I rocked and I rocked--lines of the Odyssey running through me. Man, I was sharp. Never had I worked with such speed, eloquence of style. The text took up space and I was Odysseus, venturing out on the lonely journey of my own life, the words my comrades. My mom. My dad. They were gone forever.

There was the overall pain of this realization. Loved ones lost. There was the first and bitter sting that at once arose pieces of myself that had never before spoken--wails of begging like captive birds.

Then there were the tiny, searing strings that hung from the blanket of my new life:

I would never, ever again have someone to make me lunch, someone that would not only do it because they had to and it was the right thing, but because I was their own.

I would never again, on this earth, feel that level of love. Where do you find it? Where does it live? It starts at the moment of conception as a belted elation on the highest mountain top and travels on the lightest of wings, ever upwards as each second conceives itself and melts away. They were probably with that love now, high above the rain, the noise, the thoughts of men.

Who could I share things with? Where were my confidants? It was me trying to channel my mom and dad, wondering, always, if I was right, trying to guide my seven year-old memory of them.

No more would anyone give teeth and nails in battle for me. I might find someone to die on my behalf, but I would never find anyone with the superhuman fire of fight for a beloved one--that capacity for selflessness and suffering. I would never find anyone to endure the torture, to morph with the light of passion from God and trump everything with the awesome cudgel of brass-knuckled parentry--darting and tearing like a blunt weapon with teeth.

These feelings were bigger than me. My colleagues were bigger than me. The language professors took me in, raised me as their own. I honed my skills. They made for me the sandwich of their learnings, spiced it with scholastic contempt for the world. I got it. I was watering before they planted the seed--ripples in the small ocean of my burgeoning life. There wasn't much they could teach me, but I gathered some from each and mulled them in my mind.

Sometimes, when I'm working late at the museum, I like to stand on the secret balcony and translate aloud. I'd like to thank the crickets for their applause.