FLAKES
Dilettantes and floaty flakes
Life supports
Wander from occasion to occasion
Short term delights
Putting themselves out in front
In the spotlight for a few hours.
Ashen flakes spring into the air
From enflamed leaf-piles of
An autumn day
Getting high on the fiery energy
And hard to see when they fall
To Earth when the energy dies.
Life dilettantes have no time
For long-term labors of love
For long-term labors of work
To reach the reward of confidence
Their rewards are the places they go
The things they can do
The people they can meet
With dollars from diminished jobs
They'd rather not be doing
Only giving half a mind to the task
While the other half is away
Having fun
Event-flakes
I did this, I donated to that,
I spent a few hours there,
I spoke to someone important here
I sat at home and watched
Hours of unreality unfold on
The glassy entertainment tube
Just to know what's going on.
Flouncing flakes
Glorying in someone else's life
Fans of someone else's works
Netting mere slivers of flotsam
From the bouncy waves of life
Mistaking the bounce for happiness
Mistaking the slivers for happiness
Missing the importance of dreams
Goals, ambitions, virtuosity
Fluttering aimlessly
No depth, no commitment
No delayed gratification
Ordering their milk and honey
When it suits their convenience
Their promised land is somewhere
But not here. out there.
Flakes that whisk away on the merest breeze
Destination unknown
But on arrival, the different environment
Will be perfect.
Flakes surrendering to the milk
In the cereal bowl of life,
Sag and sink, too flimsy
To hold their own
Against the drenches of living.
Flakes --
Time to blow my own wind
Time to find my hidden flakes
Time to stir into action the tiny
Substances without songs.
Flakes with no glow of glory
Flakes with no quest to take on
Rare lucid intelligence escapes
Like a silver flake from the mind
Yet too awed by its own profundity
Begins to sink back to the platitudes
And the professions of thoughts
From People Who Count
for something solid.
The flakes must go.
Pamela Joy Fernsler