A.D.D. – Poem by: Rafael Casal
A.D.D.
I’m watching 6 kids
standing around a play structure
that just abruptly stopped shooting out the water they were playing with.
My nephew, Sean, years and feet behind his insta-friends at Cedar Rose park
stands among the cluster of kids trying to summon the water back.
The other parents and I watch and chuckle as the cluster of kids try variations of “Open sesame!” at a non-responsive spout.
I’m afraid some day they’re gonna’ tell him that he as Attention Deficit
a disorder that 1 in 4 men are infected with
the band aid on a mystery they wish to de-complicate
then medicate to accommodate the commonness of why he can’t concentrate
They’ll say in class he seems lost
I’ll say his mind has the free sight
but nowadays we raise young ones to be more machine-like
because big industry needs employees who are machines, right?
who don’t make history just live on some… efficiency hype
march in submission, thats the mission, keep the seams tight
teach kids the repetition so they grow up industry types
now heres my nephew,
homework in one hand…
and a serious addiction to the 09′ tyco equivalent of legos in the other.
in this corner …
an unbelievably blank white unanswered page of questions he could
not be less engaged in!
and in the other corner…
a 4-foot long working replica of the Star Wars millennium falcon he creatively constructed using pieces from 4 separate lego sets with retractable landing gear and a working loading bay!
clearly it ain’t trouble with payin attention
he’d just rather be playing invention
so as I investigate your motives for why you’d try to medicate him
I beg to question
lets do the equation:
$24 for 30 pills, or roughly a month, which is 10 milligrams
100 bottles for every one gram
which would be 2,400 dollars per every gram of ritalin in the country
1 kilo is a thousand grams
2,400,000 per kilo of ritalin
times the 17, 618 kilos that were brought in and sold in the pharmaceutical business year of 2001,
…means it’s a 42,283,200,000 dollar industry?
its brilliant, tell kids they are inferior then have them buy back their efficiency
and at first I thought attention deficit must be on some new epidemic sh•t
til’ I found out the U.S. consumes globally 90 percent of it
diagnose you inferior so the privatized medics get
your money in the country where you go broke buyin’ your benefits
and I dont want Sean to ever look up from his book and wonder why everyone else is on page 15 and he’s still on page two
cuz’ he’s been off somewhere dreamin” about fighting dinosaurs, makin lego robots and drawing spiderman till his fingers hurt
but had to snap out of his daydream just to satisfy you
don’t tell Sean he learns wrong.
if minds didn’t wander
we wouldn’t have a Ghandi for your spiritual revolution
no black power fists shaking at a crumbling divide
no Vietnam soldiers on their way home
Hip-Hop came from kids who couldn’t seem to pay attention
There’s no Jazz, no Tap,
shoot, we’d still think the world was flat if not for straying attention
and as I watch
my now 3-year-old nephew’s mind begin to wander…
while the rest of the kids continue to bark secret code words at a non-responsive tap
in hopes to bring the water back
Sean
much shorter and younger than the rest…
scans the playground
walks across the sand and presses a shiny silver dollar sized button on the red post
which restarts the spout and shoots water into the palms of eager youngsters.
he walks back to join the group.
right then he could have been Rosal, Monet, Marx, Malcolm, Neruda
the one to walk outside the box and do something powerful
They are afraid of you Sean
because you beg to question
because boys like you grow into men worth a mention
build a world with your blocks, draw in any direction
if they ever tell you you cant focus…
good.
Pay them no attention.