the taming

when younger & full of life,
idealistic with fist in the air,
hell bent on changing the world
with a communicative heart
whose capacity to give &
care for those around her/him
seemed without need to ever
replenish,
the thought that an institution
whose front seemed to be legit,
whose will to instill knowledge in
the population of those willing
seemed pure & true,
never seemed to register.

so onto college went the aspiring
world-changer,
doing all they could to study hard
to be involved in the community
to picket when needed, to protest
when driven, and on and on went
the wonderful world of
hope,
until
graduation.

now the taming came when the
bills started to clock in,
for the job promised by the admin
staff in the human resources dept.
at the college,
just wasn’t there, when the student
got out,
so the scramble to climb back up the
tree trunk,
in order to get back in that academic
nest,
began---
but this time, the stress of life on the outside
forced the individual to be scrapping for a
way to pay the rent while also
applying to a grad school &
the new dual distribution of energy
just didn’t pan out like it used to,
because the student had been
off the wagon,
so to speak.

in attaining a job to pay the bills,
without health insurance or
permanent status promised,
the lies began to show their face &
the idealistic student now became the
angry individual
whose whole attempt to become a
“better citizen”
had been shown to be an ordeal
not really worth having unless one
wants to be a slave to the loan companies &
therefore, a slave to the established status quo
of indifferent self-struggle,
which became par for the course
when the taming began.

now, without time to get out in the streets,
as there had been,
political motivation to change the world
morphs into a combination of
dissatisfaction with the slow outcomes &
a sense of failure in many different spheres---
now out of the academic loop &
locked into the work force,
the tamed, frustrated,
slave to the system
bows down their head to offer up their mind to the
chopping block &
uncle sam raises up the axe,
until down it comes thrashing
with all the glory of a good, solid,
decapitation.