yakksoho
Bluelighter
please note that this poem is about me these are not my personal views and its not sarcastic or degrading these views, its one of those damn stories i write and so dont get irate about it. and i love the partridge family. thank you, now on with the show.
The American Dream
How are you?
It's not Friday
It's not Monday
We are in between
Saturday and Sunday
We are in between
Tuesday and Thursday
We are in between lampshades
Of crowded escalators
And buzzing intercoms
What is it to you
When I come and fix your bathroom?
How many years
Have we stood in this doorway
Eating ramen and gasping for breath
Between soliloquies?
Vegetable shortening
Is better than margerine
In this case
Sit down and look at something
That isn't verbal pornography
What are you rambling about
While my ears buzz
Twelve lightyears away?
Do I ever think about the past?
The past is where it is for a reason
When do I remember nights without whisky
And dreams without Horse?
Yet I remember listless tyrades
Shouted between doorways
They are in my skull
Because they serve to let me forget what happened
Before I stepped into the street
Do I ever think about the present?
The present is too fleeting
To be thinking about it
The present is always there
But it is not
The opposite of fleeting
It is just too short a time
Before it confuses itself with the past.
Do I ever think about the future?
Wife, land, money, the American Dream?
None of that rich blasphemy for me
If I ca'n't make it on my own
Why should I make it at all?
The government is the government
And it stays right where it is
I don't want it giving me Welfare
I don't want it paying for my Old Folk's Home
I don't want it taking my money
Or giving any thing back
What you want out of the government
Is what it's taken from every body else
You want the rainforests back
You want the lost lives
You want the draftees and the congressmen
The presidents and the first ladies
The geese and the mutton breast
Who needs the schools?
I barely even know what school is
Those kids in Ethiopia
Get by without it
Why ca'n't I?
I am the bread-winner to no body
And no body's going to get my bread but me
Why feed others' mouths
When you need to feed your own?
The Brady Bunch make me sick
And the Partridge Family is just
A bunch of plastic smiles
You think happiness
Is some body to surprise you on your birth day
Some body to come home to
And go to bed with
Some body to congratulate you
And correct your sloppy tie
Some body to look up to you
And teach you
What the rest of life didn't
Going to bed
Isn't what life is all about
Life is about me
And not getting in any body else's way
And making sure no body gets in mine
I don't need your reform
Or your sophisticated Green Party
I don't need some woman
To close my eyes for me
When I go to sleep
I am sixteen
Going on seventeen
And it's getting awful crowded
With all these nobodies
To turn to
The American Dream
How are you?
It's not Friday
It's not Monday
We are in between
Saturday and Sunday
We are in between
Tuesday and Thursday
We are in between lampshades
Of crowded escalators
And buzzing intercoms
What is it to you
When I come and fix your bathroom?
How many years
Have we stood in this doorway
Eating ramen and gasping for breath
Between soliloquies?
Vegetable shortening
Is better than margerine
In this case
Sit down and look at something
That isn't verbal pornography
What are you rambling about
While my ears buzz
Twelve lightyears away?
Do I ever think about the past?
The past is where it is for a reason
When do I remember nights without whisky
And dreams without Horse?
Yet I remember listless tyrades
Shouted between doorways
They are in my skull
Because they serve to let me forget what happened
Before I stepped into the street
Do I ever think about the present?
The present is too fleeting
To be thinking about it
The present is always there
But it is not
The opposite of fleeting
It is just too short a time
Before it confuses itself with the past.
Do I ever think about the future?
Wife, land, money, the American Dream?
None of that rich blasphemy for me
If I ca'n't make it on my own
Why should I make it at all?
The government is the government
And it stays right where it is
I don't want it giving me Welfare
I don't want it paying for my Old Folk's Home
I don't want it taking my money
Or giving any thing back
What you want out of the government
Is what it's taken from every body else
You want the rainforests back
You want the lost lives
You want the draftees and the congressmen
The presidents and the first ladies
The geese and the mutton breast
Who needs the schools?
I barely even know what school is
Those kids in Ethiopia
Get by without it
Why ca'n't I?
I am the bread-winner to no body
And no body's going to get my bread but me
Why feed others' mouths
When you need to feed your own?
The Brady Bunch make me sick
And the Partridge Family is just
A bunch of plastic smiles
You think happiness
Is some body to surprise you on your birth day
Some body to come home to
And go to bed with
Some body to congratulate you
And correct your sloppy tie
Some body to look up to you
And teach you
What the rest of life didn't
Going to bed
Isn't what life is all about
Life is about me
And not getting in any body else's way
And making sure no body gets in mine
I don't need your reform
Or your sophisticated Green Party
I don't need some woman
To close my eyes for me
When I go to sleep
I am sixteen
Going on seventeen
And it's getting awful crowded
With all these nobodies
To turn to
