Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Green-tinted glasses

Sometimes I wonder why my father didn't work harder. Why his father, a wartorn veteran, collected pension checks instead of starting a company with our namesake splashed on freeway advertisements. It should have been that easy, to collect the money made by my father and his father before him.

My thick and calloused heart, green with working-class desperation. A place usually reserved for paupers and coulda-beens, near misses.

But me, I'm lazy, you see. I'll probably never make a million dollars, not because I can't but because I wont. The greatest gift given to an American is the gift of opportunity. Orphans and Immigrants make millions daily. Thieves and the immoral make millions daily.

I'm left with mediocre clay and the tools to design a mediocre life. My hands are ill-equipped to paint something beautiful. I have a million wordless thoughts swirling through me in want of homes, needing rest upon a blank page or fertile ears.

I want to change lives, but have yet to change my own. A hypocrite living a liars life.

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