[spoken word/poetry]
This council meeting is called to order. Raise your hand if you’ve recently felt overburdened by the weight of the world simply from doing a small, mindless act like taking out the trash.
Those large bins were made to overflow from consumption, sitting in the junkyard of materialism. Celebrate your spending, your material weight; the greed. Don’t forget to recycle.
I see the strain in your eyes; the dump was running out of space, while the suns rays crashed down on your back like an undertow, the sheer force of nature exposing your fallibility. And, for just a moment, when the rational mind short circuits under pressure, were you not the most free?
There are ions of space and time yet to be filled; we are robots engaged in manifest destiny.
We try to finish puzzles with scattered pieces; scrabble letters lay dormant, and the lease to Reading Railroad remains in someone else’s hands. We attempt to organize the threads of our life into a perfect little pair, toiling over a well-executed strategy that never quite leaves conception.
How often do you meditatively scan the cereal aisle of the grocery store, stuck in a reverie, wondering whether Frosted Flakes or Apple Jacks has the least amount of sugar in it, and if you’ll die from diabetes?
I’m nothing more than a pebble vacillating between choppy waters and UV rays, the ringing in my ears reminiscent of the sound that the microwave makes when aluminum foil is inside.
I call this council meeting to order. Raise your hand if you’ve recently felt the weight of the world, took out the trash, and cried.
Kristyn Potter 