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What we Settle For
| Open Poetry #45 |
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What we Settle For |
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WindWalker Senior Member
since 2001-10-12
Posts 1218 |
What we Settle For It's there - for all to see were they not blind: it doesn't work - but no one can see it; not even you, not until it collapses in your lap: when the hopes and dreams shatter as glass when a rock is thrown and children run laughing while another screams inside a dark house. Isn't it amazing what we settle for? What we convince ourselves of? There is the tried and true and failed - Oh yes, failed, utterly failed - but what can one do? It's all there is, isn't it? We are born into society - a pattern set in cement - and even if we notice (too late) the cement is cracked and crumbling no one is pouring fresh stuff down here. Let's see, what are the options for the budding human's dreams? There's church - some kind of religion so you can get hooked on God - the Great One who's more silent than the grave; family - parents and siblings and fights followed by separation and divorce and relocation to another school. There's government - you register to pay everyday of your life and beyond; school - education - to make you fit in and teach you to walk with eyes wide shut. There's work - you have to make money -- it's what makes it all go round and down. There's repetition: your own family -- "The Home Environment" (translate please) -- certainly, read: the confining straights of marriage and kids and responsibilities no one ever taught -- you fly by the seat of your pants and you remain afloat - maybe - or you lose and fall and lose again. And at that point there's jail -- you had your good times they brought you too low and you couldn't climb out so they scoop you off the sidewalk, in cuffs you watch your shiny stolen car burn inside the basement of a house and an ambulance screams away. Stop, you say, stop already -- it's not that bad, not for most -- and sadly I have to agree, it is not: most accept the middle road, the common ground. They warm the pews, fill the voting booths, sit at desks half asleep and they commute, commute, commute, commute - like the beat of a train's steel wheels on a badly laid track -- I owe, I owe, it's off to work I go to the job and back from the job, to and fro, and it all becomes the same, blurred, wasted -- somehow mixed with forgotten dreams remembered once or twice at a party. And hope, what happened to hope? Well, it's still there, somewhere -- in the shoe closet, in the doghouse the baby's crib or the barbecue. Sometimes it's in the hot tub and sometimes in a boat or swimming pool. Or a promotion for him. Mostly it's in maxed-out loans and mortgages -- All just enough to stave off the divorce, barely enough. Dreams and hopes become memories written on a note lying limp between the fingers of the deceased and the coffin's lid is shut for the last commute: the roll down hell's door into the furnace. Amen. "And the people shall bow and say, 'Amen' together then shall they depart from this place to eat and drink, and they shall continue... continue... continue... and whatever they may have learned here shall be wiped from their memory." That is the real story. |
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| © Copyright 2009 Sharran WindWalker - All Rights Reserved | |||
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nakdthoughts Member Laureate
since 2000-10-29
Posts 19200Between the Lines |
well~~ I am speechless and if you knew me in real you would find that unbelievable~~~ M |
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secondhanddreampoet Member Ascendant
since 2006-11-07
Posts 6394a 'Universalist' ! |
very powerful indictment of the 'human condition' [ever-darkling world of the walking dead] ... well done! long sustained applause for this 'penning'!! |
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A Romantic Heart Member Ascendant
since 1999-09-03
Posts 5496Forever In Your Heart |
Wow windwalker... Your poem said my thoughts exactly, the rat race, the robots, so many times, I have said, why do we have to be like this, this, or that, who made the rules for society? Are we weird because we don't sleep at night, get up the same time everyday? go to the same job? do the same thing? I am sorry, but I find life to be more than that, just as your poem translates for me. I will not be a robot, reminds me of the hanes commercial where the boy and girl are standing in machines to be produced like everyone else, then at the last moment, they flee and remain who they are, individual and run into a field of wheat holding hands, escaping the machine world.... ~Arh  |
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Marchmadness Member Rara Avis
since 2007-09-16
Posts 9271So. El Monte, California |
I think I have invested too much effort and emotion in this lifetime to see nothing ahead but that "final commute." I am not into religion and I do not believe in the devil or hell but I instinctively know that is more to life and the eternal soul that we know. Ida |
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Midnitesun
since 2001-05-18
Posts 28647Gaia |
Some of us have learned to jump off that endless track, at least for a while if not forever. Walking in the woods, strolling on the beaches, climbing a mountain, spending time with people who are happy and make you feel good... these are the real things of life, the hopes and dreams one should carry in their heartpockets. Walk the free path whenever and wherever you can. |
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BluesSerenade Member Patricius
since 2001-10-23
Posts 10549By the Seaside |
The irony...Selling out in order to settle!! I'm a firm believer that everyone is fighting a hard battle, and there are people out there who have it so much worse.... I would rather count my blessings. |
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