Rebuttal
Let us give up our
Ideals
And embrace
Mediocrity
For the sake of conformity.
Let us not believe in
Bottomless intellectual capacities,
And in investments for our children
(So they are not broke
As we were
When we began our journey).
Let us live “simply,”
Paycheck to (small) paycheck,
And save obsessively for
Eighteen years
Until it is time to send our boys
To college,
And once they are there
They can work behind
Cafeteria burners,
And have low-paying,
Under-the-table jobs
At rickety carts in strip malls
That play the same country music
Day after day,
9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Yes, let us make them
Workhorses,
And expect them to have
4.0 GPAs.
Let us make them
Slaves to their needs,
For wants would be remote
Luxuries.
And let them resent us,
Mediocres
For not working wisely,
Succumbing to our mediocre
Principles
And not investing in college funds,
For bickering about paying
Forty-five dollars more than usual
In utility bills,
For mindlessly clipping
Coupons out of Penny Saver,
And for never having enough time
To read fiction and poetry
Between two jobs and overtime.
Let us shun our
Ideals, darling,
And let us be
Mediocre, and
Move from one moldy,
Ramshackle apartment
To another,
And forever share a wall
With our children’s rooms,
And be shamefaced most mornings
For they would surely hear us
Fighting,
Arguing,
Worrying,
And rarely out of need and convenience,
Making love.
Let us be
Mediocre then
For that is what most of the world
Wants us to be,
And our quest for
Ideals
Tests the limits of its
Sanity.
Don’t worry about the world.
It is intolerant of all
That it does not understand.
We will grasp them one day,
Because darling,
You and I
Would die if we gave up our
Ideals
And embraced
Mediocrity.
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