does it pay?

does it pay?



They had a thing 

called the classified section

at the back of the newspaper,

column after column

with rows and rows of jobs,

subdivided sections 

of what you could be,

and then the jobs 

with a college degree.

I’d usually skip this section

and turn to the funnies.

But what about the money?

How much of a man’s life

is spent

thinking over how he’s going to pay the rent

while his heart

and his passion

dies in front of him? 

Arthur Miller’s DEATH OF A SALESMAN,

a dad,

could, could’ve, might’ve been your own father,

possibly is yourself,

but the stage play works as a warning,

when the hope of a man

is placed on the wrong thing,

life, 

becomes a commodity.

Two different variations,

a mid-life crisis 

from multiple stations,

a self-taught mechanic

with a broken heart and a beer,

an inherited business owner

with a selfish bent and a whiskey,

one died

and the other lived,

but something remained:

TIME,

and how we spend it

is like a kid

with a hole in his pocket,

it’s not that I don’t like rap music,

but it’s what it represents.

A golden calf that’s worshiped,

Moses came down from the mountain

and said,

“This is no way to live.”

I can stand back and think

that most women like money

more than me,

but if they defined that thought

and knew the difference

between truth and fiction

and what was an actual possibility

I’d realize that this is not true;

they like what money can do for you.

It’s the choices that it gives

the power that it holds

and the ability to live;

men are the same

and more than half the time

we’re the ones to blame;

but it can be

kinda like Halloween candy

and too much of it

that brings a toothache and diarrhea 

and the greed 

to think that we are the only ones with a need.

But look at me,

reclined at 6AM on a couch

in a place I’d thought I’d never live

having the margin in life to write

time traveling to

wherever my mind takes me,

and after a weekend with 

a woman who believes in me,

I might be 

the richest man 

in the world.

Dan Parks