Saturday, December 16, 2017

What and Why?

by Karen Kay Remus (c) 2017

What is the meaning of my life?
Why am I living in the Deep South?
Why am I forced to read Flannery O’Connor?
With her southern-fried often bloodied and insane protagonists?

Why have I lived fifty three years
And only attained the position of English tutor?
When I had such grand plans for my future:
Concert pianist, famed vocalist, Mozart-level composer

Edvard-Munch-esque painter, Stephen King-styled author
Comedienne a la Lucille Ball, Monty Python, or Steve Martin?
Einstein-equivalent discoverer of universal truths
And solver of age-old, world-wide problems

Like over-population, pollution, habitat destruction
Animal extinction, world hunger, fossil fuel dependence
War, violence, and the Orwellian decline of society?
Why am I living in a declining Orwellian society?

Wherein the lunatic president of this country
Was installed by the lunatic president of another country
In direct opposition to the Constitution of this country?
Why do I wake up every morning asking why?

Why should I get up and go out into the grind
When the highest authority in the country
Lacks my own skill level and makes
Over one-hundred times my annual income

And still considers his income paltry
And calls his grand residence a “dump?”
And creates nothing except discord and derision 
Among the people he is supposed to serve?

I’ll tell you why:
To spur me to action
It ain’t over yet
It has only just begun

53 is the new 35, but twice as scarred and smart
I whip my body and mind into a weapon of mass construction
I move upon my sacred calling like a bitch
Empowering people to wield their voices, pens, and keyboards

More mightily than swords or light sabers
Status meaning nothing. Intention meaning everything
I am a cable for the current that inspires new generations to think critically 
And to rise up, speaking their own transcendent wisdom

No comments:

Post a Comment