So short with gram

all she wants is to talk
to hear a voice she knows while she’s still on this planet.
Not many familiar voices.
Least I can do is make mine pleasant.

But I didn’t. I complained my usual complaint,
“I’m not satisfied by my work”
and her 80 years of wisdom says back
in that same voice and words I’ve heard a thousand times
“we don’t always get to do what we want to in this life.”

This sounds to me, something like
“we never get to do what we enjoy”
so I make my point
again as I have a thousand times before
fighting the message of the world
through the familiar voice I know
the voice that I’m old enough to know, does not represent the world
no aristotle or euripides
just grama.

Proud of her stock of struggle.
Her mother’s struggle
her struggle.
Her children’s struggle.
She expects me to too. It’s honourable.
Better be after all the time you spent doing it.

Can’t life ever be what we want it to be?Better yet, isn’t it noble to try?
To dance at more than the occasional weddding?

My struggle has become
trying not to struggle.
Struggle against my safe judgement.
Struggle for fun
for fulfillment
for satisfaction.
Struggle to let my voice be heard.
To remember my own voice

after all these years of struggling
to hear it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 1st, 1998 at 12:00 am and is filed under life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.