Obeying authority with resentment
or escaping authority with glee.
I’m not inclined to be like that.
My feelings on authority are complex.
That isn’t me.
I feel sorry for the captain or the teacher
who can’t control
those under them like me who enjoy the luxury of a soul.
Insights fell on me, one after the other, not as I thought they would,
with embraces, and cheering, and tears.
The insights weren’t good.
The insights were soft to the touch. They had nothing to do with my peers.
Poetry needs the scumbag, which politics must destroy and measure.
The citizen struggles to be good.
I, the poet, merely watch that struggle with pleasure.
Poetry and politics cannot mingle.
If they do, it is sexual and joking and strange!
The wed, the bound, the loving, grow!
But I, the poet, am single.
When I saw the abstract learning thread was lost,
that mental illness had become a political party,
impacting smoke as if it were air,
I accepted, at last, uncertainty, and the vast reaches of the unfair.