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?
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
