Disadvantaged but they managed

We hail from people who had to toil
through ages in bleak subsistence
on some miserly morsel of soil
eking out a grim existence

Disadvantaged
but they managed

Now to ‘consumer’ uplifted
infinitely more stuff
How human life has shifted!
Why can’t we get enough?

After beaten black-and-blue escape got overdue

Careless years blown dissipated
lived ignorant of too much
Dull days closed down desolated
leaned too hard on booze’s crutch

I kept on churning on shallow laps
around & around & again
’til sounded inexorably taps:
Plainly mundane, nothing arcane!

For true happiness I’d sung in vain
ignorant of another refrain

What me yield? Don’t you see I’m large-wheeled?

At those pedestrian crossings striped
cantankerous drivers of ‘tanks’
impatiently stopped, while sometimes griped
about walkers’ deficient thanks

Obsequious must be walkers may
it’s in U.S culture, of course
prevailing attitude holding sway:
Need respect only size & force!

Thus most backward to yield
when we are the large-wheeled

+)
‘tanks’ = here: ever larger cars, SUVs et al

A quip of wisdom or abyss dumb?

Quips rarely realistic

we trot them out to sound clever
Tending over-simplistic
so ties to truth they may sever

Quips misidentify
meager on meaning
may oversimplify
while good at preening

Cutthroat snappy
who knows how benight
Quick & scrappy
while rarely contrite

 

Tittle-tattle in Seattle

Haven’t we got quite the knack
for freely shooting the breeze
for endless boorish yak
above pizza dripping cheese?

I’d rather hold out for the arcane
hoping to get bit more evolved
than being dragged down in the mundane
by someone soundly self-involved:

Spottily bit snottily
naughtily or haughtily