ADULTING

Aristotle says;

Education is the best survival tool for old age

What Ari doesn’t know is that the 

Truth found in education at night

Is now the lie used against you 

Circling the continent twice by the

Time you awake

    But you carry on as if it hasn’t

•

There’s frustration in being adult

When grown men fight in high-rise sandboxes 

In suits bullet-proofed with dollar signs

   But you carry on as if they don’t

•

There’s frustration in behaving grown up

When the agony of the human condition

Can be rationalized  

   And we carry on as if it isn’t

•

There’s frustration in being grown up

When the door to respond-in-kind

 Remains locked by decency

   Yet you pull on it anyway – as if it isn’t

•

There’s frustration in being grown-up

Knowing that civilizations have been lost to dreams of retribution

Ungovernable desires

For the “blood-dimmed tide”

To drown the babble

AND the rabble

   But you desire it anyway

•

There’s frustration in being grown-up

Knowing the constancy of war

Feeling the subliminal connections between 

Truth and chaos. 

   And we carry on anyway

Holding our truth in hands folded in supplication

As we kneel, unreasonable, at the edge of age 

Amid the *signs that tell us to behave like adults

   *Invisible ink 

•

We drag our middle-class, care-worn hearts

Across years of capitalist tyranny

Through periods of relative decorum

Retreating waves allowing enemies 

Time to deep-fake truth

And we must behave as if they aren’t?