Tag: job

A Reflection on Juneteenth

Crimes unimaginable

Sins unfathomable

Wrongs not righted

With an apology,

A soft word,

Or the stroke of a pen.

Pain to the deepest parts

Of the heart and soul,

The very fiber of one’s being,

A wound that doesn’t heal,

But rather cuts deeper

With every smile,

Every handshake,

On every pay day,

Every trip to the grocery store,

Every night at mealtime,

When they look at their children,

When they look at ours.

Privilege continues

Despite the lip service,

Despite the promises,

Amidst the meager gifts,

The dregs of easy charity

From the tatters of a bursting purse,

The guilt trip laid on thick

To the middle class and even

The working poor.

Those that lack for food,

Clothing or shelter,

Living barely day to day,

Not knowing where one’s next

Meal will come from.

And at the church the preacher

Says try harder, pray more,

Save your dollars

So you can send your little ones

To a good college,

Make them study,

Keep them out of trouble,

Tell them you love them,

That you’re proud of them

For that report card.

What do you say

When the white kid

Calls them the n-word?

What do you say

When you don’t have a job

Because you refused

To kiss your supervisor’s butt

When he would talk to you

Like you were nothin’,

Just a cog in his machine,

A disposable, replaceable,

Optional, neglectable,

Insultable, disrespected,

Used, abused, tossed out

To the street

Like so much garbage,

Black man?

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Poetry is Not the Giving Tree

Chillin’ in my chair,
Trying not to stare
Into the distance
As I feel my stance

Wobbly beneath me.
A busy day, costly
To my mind and body.
But brings home for thrifty

Purchases of necessities.
Do you blame me
For leaving early
Today? Every

Day, I give my energy
To my company,
Hell or high sea.
Sometimes I see

How it rearranges me.
I wonder if there could be
Some other job for me,
But it’s not likely.

So, even though
I don’t say no
To opportunity,
My situation tires me.

Could there be
Another way for me
To make money?
Poetry is not the Giving Tree

That I wish it could be.
Skeptically,
You look at me,
Saying, “But it could be!”

Oh, Poetry!
How you edify me!
But you don’t feed me.
Slinking slowly

Out of reality,
I have a fantasy
Of how it could be,
But, alas, I am not free

To write constantly.
I must work to see
My paycheck biweekly
Deposited, usually.

So you ask me,
“Don’t you want to be
All that you could be?”
It is enough for me

To pay my usury.
My creditors love me
For my money,
Not my poetry!

Ambition

I used to be a very ambitious person.

I used to dream of world peace.

I used to think I would have a great job,

Like a world leader, and then, maybe

 

A college professor in Humanities.

I used to be the kind of person

That might have believed in the saying,

“So little done.  So much to do.”

 

Well, I never was good in groups,

So I wouldn’t do well in the United Nations.

I can’t read very fast, so

Graduate school was not for me.

 

Even after my mental illness hit me,

My ego fought long and hard for something

BIG, something to wrap my dreams around.

Finally I settled.

 

I got a real job, working to pay the bills.

That’s when everyday life hit me square in the face.

That’s when I learned that there are two kinds of people:

Those who make decisions, and those who carry them out.

 

And I found myself to be the latter.

No glory in being a producer,

No recognition in making a buck.

At least for most of us.

 

I guess that’s part of growing up.

You realize you’re not as strong

As you thought you were.

You realize that there is always

 

Someone else who knows more than you.

And, the hardest, you come to see

That there is never enough money.

And dreamers don’t get paid for dreaming.

 

 

(Carry on Tuesday #107, prompt:

The last words spoken by Cecil Rhodes

before his death in 1902)

Sometimes I Freak, Part II

Sometimes I freak when I walk into a room because I know I will be in that room for the next 8 hours and be faced with tasks with impossible deadlines and impossible expectations for how those tasks are to be done. Yes, I’m talking about my job. I am an indexer and an administrative assistant. Well, I can handle the latter easier than I can handle the former sometimes. As an indexer, I create complex reference material for legal material that is published by my company. The only problem is that most of the time either the job comes to me already late or, if it is on time, it still must be done yesterday because we don’t have enough people in our indexing department to handle all the work that comes from two or three times as many editors and is proofread by twice as many proofreaders. Yeah, we indexers are the red-headed step-children of the Supplement Department. And as far as the administrative assistant duties, well those have to be kept to the minimum, despite my boss’s duties which are enough for three or four people, her being the Indexing Supervisor, Deputy Director of the Supplement Department, and serving practically full-time as a regular indexer, just to keep our inventory moving for those impossible deadlines. And let’s not forget the impossible expectations. No mistakes. This, despite jobs that come to us full of mistakes and in styles that vary almost as much as the thousands of customers we have. It’s fun stuff, really.

Sometimes I freak when I go to a party. “Why?” you ask. “Parties are fun!” Well, they are partly fun for me, but it is very inwardly forced. First of all, remember that I am an introvert. Second of all, did I mention that I am bipolar? Well, if I’m in a good mood and manic, it’s cool. I can move with the masses. But if I’m depressed, anxious, or in a mixed episode of manic-depression, meaning I’m depressed, excitable, anxious, sad with racing thoughts and intense energy—not a good recipe for party-going. And I really can’t control how I’m going to be. I don’t like crowds, and I don’t like pretending to be happy when I’m not, which is exactly what people expect of you at parties. Otherwise, you get lots of questions like “Are you okay?” and “What’s wrong with you?” More fun stuff, I assure you.

Sometimes I freak when I visit family. And this goes for blood-relatives just as much or more than in-laws. Visiting family is really a mixed bag for me because I live pretty far away from my blood-relatives so I have to use annual leave, and either have to drive a long distance (from North Florida to South Florida) or fly on a plane (San Rafael, California for my aunt, uncle and grandmother or Rochester, New York for my brother and his family). So I’m taking a vacation to see people I want to see because they are my family, but who I don’t want to see because they are my family. Wouldn’t it be fun to take a cruise, just my wife and I? Or travel to the Grand Canyon or something by ourselves? The last three big vacations I took were all with family: San Rafael, Davie (for my dad) and Miami (for my mom), and then a while back there was the big trip to Disney World with my wife’s whole family. In between, I did go to New Orleans for the Jazz and Heritage Festival which was headed by Pearl Jam (I’m a big fan), but there was the fact that we stayed with my friend’s family and spent some time visiting other family members—always got to be some family in there. That was okay, of course, because my friend is like family to me, and her whole family is so gracious and welcoming that you feel like one of their family, but then again…they are family. There just seems to be no escaping it.

(To be continued…)