Poetry: Fine Arts Major

He’s still,

An island in a river of meandering

flesh that drifts from

point to pointlessness,

A bitter flood of

the mundane

digging deeper

into the rut of

everyday,

of life cycles

forged by bread-winning

and role modeling,

stage playing for children,

picket fences painted white

only on one side

Because it’s the outside that matters.

He’s still,

Watching the canyon

of unhappy, misspent

lives yawn wider

and wider still,

absorbing more of the

career-oriented

whose young minds were filled with

dollar signs and

thoughts that they would succeed,

shown only that painted side of the fence;

Now they find the groove

is a rut

because everyone followed the

dream of marketability, and the wave

left them at the bottom of the tide pool.

He’s still,

the successfully shut out

writhe around him, fish

on the shore of a river that rushed

finance over love,

career over dream,

and they flounder, gasping in the

confines of cubicles and

clerical jobs

Wailing against the wasted years

of  computer scienceand

business classes that back

the useless paper in their hands,

against community service that

someone did better, someone

did more.

He’s still,

as those who cracked their heads

on the bottle neck of popular

careers wedge themselves

into the muck of their chosen fields,

wishing all the while they could go back

when they wanted to sing

or act, or dance, and someone had told them

that wasn’t an economically viable dream

Be a doctor or banker, be

a moneymaker.

And ignorant, they had listened

told themselves   

that this was what they wanted

realistic income – stability

over satisfaction.

He’s still,

and he smiles,

the pencil in his hand and

sketchbook on his lap

as he draws the world around him

in shades of gray.