During my senior year of high school, I wrote two slam poems as part of my AP Literature class. Apparently, back then I felt as strongly about some things as I do now.
Overtime
Woe to the working man,
forever condemned to work with his hands.
there's no wrong in working hard for a living,
only wrong is living always working hard.
In the morning he comes and begins the preparations
hours before the light of day reaches the eyes of the privileged.
Sweat runs across his brow and begins to soak his shirt,
while they check the clock and decide not to pull the covers back.
His supervisor arrives to inform him that he will be receiving his regular pay,
His reaction, a silent dismay, because it is of course a holiday.
They are aware of such and do not hesitate to be excited by it.
So, they make their plans and begin their day.
They arrive and he sees their elegant plans.
To sit in chairs, relax, and give commands.
They of course realize that while they sit he stands,
but he is of course paid, and they are paying, no?
No. He is not paid. He is condemned 'til the end of time.
Condemned to work regardless of whether he receives overtime.
And why? Because that low wage is all he has to get by.
He reasoned that as they sit in their chairs they could not possibly understand.
He was of course right.
Just as he was right about the order he had gotten wrong.
But he was also right that this day would be his swan song.
Because their patience would run out before long.
Where was it that the situation had fallen apart?
I contend that it was from the beginning,
while they were each children, still grinning.
One had gotten a silver spoon, the other a dusty broom.
Ambivalence
Caught between hope and fear
Where all that's right becomes opaquely clear.
Clear as milk, the sour kind,
or clean as the east river brine,
so become the heart and soul and mind.
On the one side of the infinite divide
lies mind the you are laid captive inside,
the endless halls of past experience and stubborn pride.
Torment as the battle lines of wisdom move forth from their crumbling ramparts,
falling hard against the rising rebel forces of the heart.
The mind's learned rules and regulations
for dealing with the situations
that have no doubt become nothing short of tribulations,
slowly become a bane to existence.
And yet they begin to fade like a cured pestilence.
As the world grows dark,
there begins the world of the heart.
Torment of the day cast onto the dreams of the night.
The inner fire realized in full delight
but still concealed by the secrecy of the night.
Then, morning breaks and dream fades into broken memory,
the shrill noise from your night table begins the chaotic melody.
The day brings back the reality, the insanity.
I know why the caged bird sings.
It wishes to be free of the encircling bindings.
When does the hour of revelation arrive,
for all that has managed to survive, better yet, thrive.
Not revelation in the sense that things cannot be as they are,
but revelation that things were meant to have made it this far.
Revelation that not all rule breaking has to end with a scar.