Scouts honor

Scouts honor

Life is for the green girls that live a world away
from dormitory halls and broken homes.

Green is for girls with ruffled curtains and painted walls
for drawing tablets and tree stumps... away from the probe of
the old, the young or the confused.

Life is for the girls in green, the ones with tie-dyed suns
and whispering brooks, the ones who have pretty words and not
just sounds
for those who still sing the songs of the seventies under their
breaths or shout out loud on pattycake buses.

Life is for the big cookie sale girls who basket weave and
not for the buttery rolls on dormitory benches
or on the antiseptic floors on old red rugs where green girls never lay. 

Scouts honor.

Never from the laps of house fathers speaking in the Hebrew tongue,
or in the yanking grip of disgusted house mothers with angry hairbrushes.

Life in green is for the girls who sip tea from the roots
and bark of sassafras trees, who dip their bags with pinkies erect
like the 12-year-old boy beneath the bleachers and to learn about
the elbow triangle from books and badges, 

never from the tumbled limbs that send everyone home

 in white-faced rows of death march hush.

 Scouts honor.

The green life is never lived in basements of old toaster lit cigarettes,
where shabby chic furniture is just shabby, 

they ride pink bicycles that sparkle in the sun that wear their names in white calligraphy, that beep
horns and bounce front-wheel baskets. 

Scouts at age nine don't swallow handfuls of aspirin,

 or chug codeine from dormitory medicine cabinets 

or fight off Cunnilingus from 13-year girls on the cold ceramics

 of the big girls' cottage.

 Scouts honor.

Green is for life that springs up under your feet after
it gets stepped on, how it reaches up again after the crushing
weight of lovers back, how it protects from the gravel beneath and
rises to sway again.

Author's Note

Reviews

[Einstein Noodle]

i love this ... and you know ... the green life is a precious place we all need to have, first of all, and to go to on a regular basis ... my green is a blow up hot bubble massage tub on the back deck ... the cool of fall coming on lingering humidity .. the opening of the forests ... i think this is exquisitely solid in the building theme and character ... subtle but stark contrast in a real, been street hurt world with the green one .. i could be missing a lot in this .. but i feel so satisfied with what i have from reading i only want to read it again ... there is peace and comfort in a torn world .. one can find it ... Scouts honor! ;)
E.

[Corset]

Thank you EN!!!

[Chris Shaw]

Different sides of life expressed here. Some of the imagery is quite unpleasant. Those brought up in dormitory halls who have come from broken homes have it very tough. Their childhood is stolen at an early age. In sharp contrast to the green girls. Your lines really made me stop and think how lucky some of us are. An excellent write here Corset.

Chris

[Corset]

Thank you Chris!

[h d e rushin]

this reads like Ginsberg's "Howl" where the speaker (he, she) has been witness to the destruction of the best minds of this generation. Then, in Ginsberg's case, the uneven analog of catalogs of people being destroyed. I use to be a scout. We all were in one form or another until real life took over; until metals were for bravery not merit. (at least the girl scouts had vanity).
You stretched out in the middle of this poem and dug deep into the metaphor of duty with such aplomb you'de think you were a spiritualist or an evangelist. Or both. You're a great writer......dana

[Corset]

Thank you Dana , I'm neither but I do so appreciate that coming from you and Jacob, it at least encourages me to do better, to reach deeper.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

and yet life in green is very much for those you mention....Girl Scouts come from real backgrounds...with real flaws...not perfect lives...this is such an intense poem...it is one of your best...
the attitude, the language...the beautiful stark, nasty imagery that shows the dark side of life...the side hardly ever talked about...only the pristine leaves the lips of those who cover for the undercarriage of life.
j.

[Corset]

Thank you Jacob, you completely understood this. there are two sides to every coin some sides look the same some sides hide what is on the different under. surfaces can be deceiving