Bob Dylan had a better title
Bob Dylan had a better title
The funny thing about life
is that you can choose
to be anything:
a grocery clerk
a smocked nurse
or dead
inside a hearse
but it’s as if
we’ve forgotten this,
and instead
have hired ourselves out
like a $20
an hour
whore.
I know
you’ve got your rent payment
and have spent the last ten years
working hard
and now with the promotion
and accompanying pay raise
you deserve a
new car,
but what about
remembering the fact that
you don’t even like
where you are?
A kindergarten start,
we had no idea
what we were doing then
and if you look at us now
some of us
actually act
like we’ve got it figured out,
b
u
t
come with me
to take a look
behind the Wizard’s curtain:
the boss forgets
the ones who are trying hard
and instead focuses on
the troubled many,
the faithful wife is ignored
by the cheating husband
who buys flowers
for the one next in line to the side,
and the writer
begins to forget
the one book
that needs to be written.
How much attention
have we actually
been given?
God said
that he has
numbered the hairs on our head,
knowing and counting
the days of our lives
is it then
that He has also
placed inside of us
only a certain amount
of passion?
The poet’s responsibility
is to take a universe of possibility
and reduce it down
to something
that we
can actually see.
“Oh,” he says. “I get it now.”
“Do you realize how much work
that took?” I ask.
He looks up from his desk at me,
“I told you
to only work
from 7 to 3.”
“Assigning me to this,” I say.
“Is like asking Samson
after he regained his strength
to only kill the Philistine.”
I get back
that same
sold out look.
“Or to ask Moses
after learning he was a Jew
to turn back to Pharaoh's house
and say, ‘Meh,
maybe it means something to you.’”
“Well,” he says.
“You gotta serve somebody.”
“I appreciate the shot,” I say.
“But that somebody
will always be me
and never be you.”