A Better Life
I’m just so tired of all this ad nebulosity
Being lectured on engine wear and motor oil viscosity
Being told I need drugs for emotional well-being
Because I’m so stressed with all the violence I’m seeing
They say we’re obese amidst forty five fast food ads
Burgers, tacos, fries, all biggie-sized—egad
We hear about the movie stars and all their crazy rumors
How wearing cell phones on our ears will give us all brain tumors
If you’re not sick with this, then you must be dying of that
Go on a new diet, eat all you want, and still lose ugly fat
It’s diet number three million six hundred and fifty-five
Try this one we guarantee you’ll really feel alive;
Alive enough to buy our stuff and spend more than you get
Keeping up with the guy next door, go deeper into debt
You need a break, the great escape—a vacation you can’t afford
You owe it to yourself or you’ll go crazy and get bored
They will handle every problem and inefficiency
Just make the payments, they will be your sufficiency
You can live the dreamy life they package neat and sell
Their brand of utter happiness—could this be living hell?
I look around and clearly see that nothing’s getting better
But they say that it’s my fault, I’m not a real go-getter
They have a tiny pill that I can take for energy
Abbott-Johnson-Lilly labs pill number sixty-three.
Why is it this sappy thing they call the happy life
Puts band-aids on our stresses while it fills us up with strife
Driving us insane with all the things we must be missing
Staring at what we can’t have just wondering and wishing?
Is there something that makes sense that doesn’t leave a gaping hole
Deep within the heart of me—in the center of my soul
Something that will make this life all be worth the trouble
Instead of always feeling like I’m picking through the rubble?
Was a crazy cosmic accident the origin of man
Or was it truly grand design by some Almighty plan
Against the infinite odds did we start by happenstance
A gazillion detailed variables of perfect circumstance
Or does the minute detail make it clear and make it plain
That this was all created—yes they think that that’s insane
Was it random laws of physics somehow falling into place
Or did Power set the laws in motion deep in outer space?
Were there bounds set and ordered all around and everywhere
Ordered to establish what is true and what is fair?
And so I’m knocking loudly on the waiting door this day
Will he be there to sup with me and show a better way
Because life’s nebulosity just gets me too uptight
I’m tired of the shadow’s burden—good God, turn on the light.
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© 2013 NavWorks Press and DE Navarro. All rights reserved.
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Published in Dare to Soar, 2013. Available at any bookstore worldwide.
Or order a signed copy direct from The Curio
DE Navarro teaches poetry and runs a poetry WordShop™ at We Write Poetry™
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DE Navarro
David Eric (D.E.) Navarro, author, poet, essayist and editor, is a poet-philosopher of the pure land school of haiku. He is also a clinical research medical writer and copy editor as well as a biblical research scholar and teacher. He moved to Tucson, Arizona in 2018 to finally settle down after 40 years of roaming around the globe. He holds a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Studies (emphasis on arts and humanities) with Purdue University, and has degrees in Communications and Theology. His love of poetry and the writing arts started at age 8. A collection of his poetry was first published in the 1980 Winter Issue of the Purdue Exponent Literary Edition and many of his poems, essays, and articles have been published in various magazines, venues, and journals ever since, including the NY Literary Magazine, Miracle Magazine, Poetry Festival, and Better Than Starbucks; and in anthologies such as Between Life and Language, Ingram Publishing, 2009, The Black Rose of Winter, Lost Tower Publications, 2014, the Bukowski Erasure Anthology, Silver Birch Press, 2015, and Com-pen-di-um, CA Gallagher, 2016. He is author of 6 volumes of poetry, his latest being A Tree Frog's Eyes: Haiku, Blurb San Francisco, 2020. He is Founder of NavWorks Press and the Pure Land School of Haiku, and originator of the online We Write Poetry forums where he teaches poetry and haiku and enjoys mentoring new poets and writers. He also did a series of in-person poetry workshops for the public library system in Tuscaloosa, Alabama from 2007-2010. He is very involved in a number of online poetry and haiku groups and communities on various social media. For more information about his work and to see all the things he is involved in, please see his website at https://www.de-navarro.com. For a list of his books, see his Amazon Author Page at https://www.amazon.com/David-E-Navarro/e/B00H55NBIQ/.
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