How Can You?

How Can You?

How can you?
Sit there and be herded through school
like mindless zombies aimlessly wandering around
like manipulated fools
you might as well just mOO
like the cow meat that you eat
starved of conscious mind food from the dry academic heat
that make your feet move
with quickening haste
through an institutional cycle of American POP culture
that makes you selfishly concerned only about your own upward, social pace

How can you?
Wake up every morning and get dressed
just to impress
to receive a minimal salary
you make grudging hourly
the repetition
boredom
suppressed anger
and depression
of a job that left you
robbed
stripped naked
by a legitimate and systematically
subtle mob
of
individualistic principles and broken promises
that leave you unaware
of the human decay
you suffer day by day
40 hours a week
making you meek
frail
and derailed
in a temper, bipolar-ness tantrum of frustrated defeat
so that you can look towards the short weekend for
relief
and before you know it
in 2 days
it’s once again a Monday sometime in May
of NEXT YEAR
and you’re in the same spot
without a plot to break free
of this working-to-survive epidemic disease

How can you?
Live out the rest of your life
concerned only about you own well-being and personal strife
as you progress towards a materialistic and empty goal
weaved together by false securities
fueled to burn by capitalistic charcoal
that is generic and corrupt as they come
because whatever the system feeds you,
you take,
opening your mouth wide
consuming as much meaningless pleasures of life you can possibly rake

And at the very end when you finally have a chance to sit back and relax
in your multiple-financed home
as fragile as hot wax
your reflection back through life
now conclude at your old age
realizing
all the institutionally selfish mistakes
you have foolishly made
have not been justified because you were
moving through the world so fast
enabling yourself
unable
to stop and smell the flowers for the
brief
moment that their beauty truly last
but at age 80 learning the humanity lesson can be hard
as this society now hold your wrinkles and bones
in complete disregard
your existence no long matters as you
slowly and quietly disappear away
personally apologizing to your guilt for your younger and clueless days
where Facebook
beer pong
one-night stand hookups
that BMW 3-series
your 2.3 kids
and prosperous
American Dream
was your complete world
now comes shattering down in a lonely, climactic whirl

So how can you?
Go through life the way you do
when people are cryin’
dyin’
mystified by the lyin’
that puts life in body bags
contorted in different shapes and sizes
families separated
genocide and war
international human rights faltering
corrupted foreign policy
and the American Dream popular galore
that makes you desensitized
to the victims who are blind
bleeding
fearful to breathe
undeserving of torture and the endless pain they receive
EASY
just turn your head the other way
close your eyes
and
plug your ears
and act like nothing is wrong
or in the words of Rihanna,
“Just live your life, Ay a Ay a Ay a”

-A12