Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Pearls

We’ve been cultured like
clams, in deep sea beds,
in the hopes we’ll make
pearls.

Prodded to produce,
pearls of joy, of wisdom,
and of perfection. It’s what
we’re conditioned to do.

We’re farmed, made to choke on
the sandy grains of annoyance and turn
them into some priceless bauble
someone else can claim.

The pearls vary in quality,
in value, in size and weight, in
color and shine. Yet all are collected
for someone else to profit.

Failure to produce a pearl of
joy makes you an outcast, as if
finding or creating joy is just so
very easy; just something we’re to do.

Not creating a pearl of wisdom,
makes you a dunce, a dolt, a dimwit
and the open target of scorn and derision,
to be tossed away with the bad clams.

No pearl of perfection? The hardest of all,
doesn’t come easy for anyone, hardly anyone
at all. Yet, it’s still expected, wanted and
dreamed of as a commodity.

Joy, wisdom, perfection: are the pearls
we’re told to have. We’re told it’s what makes us
desirable, useful and respected, otherwise
there’s no purpose to us at all, what good are we?

Writhing beds of clams, producing cultured
pearls, spitting out the same old market flooding
trinkets, with regularity, with speed, with
dedicated diligence. Clockwork and punch clock.

The natural pearl, unforced, un-coerced,
un-molested, are true rare beauties.
They can be joy, wisdom or
perfection, there’s no blue-print.

Only that they’re pretty, an amazing
paint stroke of nature, a nifty trick of unmeasured
time, growing on a schedule un-monitored
by any clock or eye.

Natural pearls are highly prized and worthy
of awe, it’s why we covet them so,
and force the creation of our own through
the rigors of control and expectation.

The culture of expectation, to be something,
to be something great, to be something greater
than what you started with, to be something greater
than you started with or else.

Maybe that’s why, when we see the
natural pearl, we are so impressed, rapt in
it’s simple beauty of it doing just what it
does, without pressure of expectation.

I get tired of the sea bed, I get tired of
making pearls for others, I get worn out by joy,
wisdom, perfection and time. I just
want to swim, and eventually make my own. 


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