i[dedicated to people with a sense of humor]
Most real wisdom comes upon us
when we are very young, before
we develop the temerity to believe
all the small minds who tell us
we do not know enough
we do not think enough
we do not buckle down
and suffer enough, and certainly
not as much as our forefathers
whose names are lost
under all the great headings
in all the erroneous history books
with their study guides
and short answer and multiple guess tests
that somehow manages not to cover
all the evil done
by those people we are raised to believe
are heroes. Carlyle said as much;
but we ignore him. (He was a fascist.)
And so
we run out our days
like Wile E. Coyote
chasing
what we will never have
and even if we did,
we’d come on it too late
to really enjoy it
the way we do
in our starved
and gutted imaginations.
But somehow,
that means more to me
than all the promises I heard
growing up at the end
of the American Century. And if
my heroes are cartoon characters
they are at least
a more honest representation
than the people my daughter learns about
in school.
