You do not have to be good.

Start there.

Really?  Isn’t all of school and life about being good?

No.

Besides, the poem does not say it is bad to be good or that you should not try to be good, it only says you do not HAVE to be good.

To measure up and make the grade and get the likes and win the customers and prove to mom and prove to dad and to ask the inner voice of your inner club to club you every day and every hour and every minute and every second with “you have to be good” is not what you have to do.     

Only let that kitten of you, the puppie of who you are, love what it loves. 

Because,

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees through the desert

for one hundred miles repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

O.K?