443. Poem "Personal Impacts of the Governator's Experiment"

Personal Impacts
of the Governator's Experiment

My dough runs out
come September.
I hve nightmares
if I don't work
like a dog.

My father's strapped
to the U
for the summer.
No time or money to
research the Sierra San Pedro Martir,
to help his grad student.

And my mom's
delerious over the phone
at work.
GovPub's dissolving.
It's been a twenty-year
affair of love-hate
labor for her.
The library Head made
faulty decisions for new work,
and everyone's rustled.
No one's speaking,
just underlying tension.
My mother chose not to speak.
I barked at her,
"The Head cannot read your mind."
She said the Head was delerious,
it wasn't worth speaking.
I barked more,
"That's arrogant to assume!"
The solution's to
just go where they put her,
get bullied around,
don't complain.
I grew angry,
"The Head is NOT God!
And thanks so much for all the
things you tell me,
have told me what to do!
For all the advice!
All the childhood wisdoms!
For all the mandates!
You don't even communicate
with your own colleagues,
You don't even practice
what you preach!
The Head has no clue,
so GIVE HER a clue!
Don't expect anyone else
to do it!
If I had let the system
bully me around,
I would have still been
a miserable, fat pig at UKLA
studying stupid
parasitic plants!"

Then my mom
quietly told me,
"Well, your life is a fantasy.
And mine is real."
I was so flustered,
I ended the call.
"Okay, whatever.
I gotta go."

Then my father called,
and I moaned,
"My mother gets bullied at work,
she comes home at watches God TV,
prays to God,
gets all existentialist-like,
tells me what to do with my life,
says her life is real
and mine is a dream--
and she doesn't even
practice what she
believes, assumes.
Who is she to live this way?"

My father was upset,
"That was a copout remark."
I envisioned him
shaking his head,
"Just ignore it."

Well?!
It's hard to ignore.

Jules called.
He just caught five sheephead.
I exclaimed the 101st time,
"At least the Ocean
is Recession Proof!"

"We'll see,"
Jules skeptically smiled.

The Governator's
making us all
crazy.

Written June 25, 2009