Poem-A-Day: Day 4

Sadly

“Sadly…”

was the last thing I heard that day
before I leapt through the door
like I had something to prove.
Don’t we all?
Proving to ourselves
that each day we can wake up
and manage the hum-drummery
of typical day-to-day
in and out
punching clocks.
We beat ourselves up
the same way.
But leaping through the door,
it was an act in self-reliance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841.
The call for staunch individualism,
avoid conformity,
and false consistency.
That goes against the very needs
of proof.
Consistency,
oil-like,
the ilk of society
milking their desks for money,
not really understanding why
they leapt through the door
in the first place.

I woke up that day
with their same goal of perfection in mind.
Raise the flag high,
and the pay higher;
a jolly roger signaling to those near
that I mean business,
or at least,
mean to liberate it from them.
But as I held my chin up,
and cinched the Italian silk noose
of hatred perpetuity,
She simply looked at me
from her spot
lazily maintained in an unkempt bed,
and waited
until I was ready to lunge out the door,
and she said poignantly,

“Sadly…”