You want to be a poet?! My father’s calloused heart scoffed at the idea: why not write a movie? And, I mean, writing is a nice hobby—my mother’s carpal tunnel, ravaged back and hips assured me—but you need a real job! Her skin is blotched with worry, sixty-two and still serving food, cutting hair for tens of dollars. She’s a wage slave in the country that dumped her husband, my father, into a distant jungle, had him kill Vietnamese farmers for freedom, an expensive commodity when traded on the human market. And now she has this son, an unemployed professor, an almost PhD who thinks he’s a poet, a writer, depressed and anxious, on the computer every day instead of getting a real job, steady work, like his father—a carpenter, or maybe you could be an electrician. You’re so good with your hands. I’m really not, mom. I’m clumsy. Oh, stop it, Charlie! Be an electrician. They make good money.
Oh I know those blues – the song of the artist who fell in love with words; the cry of the artist who breathes to paint, the hours of practice of the artist whose instrument is the extension of his soul. I know those blues and mama never got it! Grabbed me in the solar plexus; good work!
Thank you for reading, and for being grabbed in the solar plexus.
Charlie, I heard this song thruout my life. I even hear it from my significant other, from time to time. But I have a job and get along. Keep up the fight for your soul! It works itself out in the end.
Thank you for the comment. I’ll do my best. =)