Wisdom?

 
 
It’s the nature of the beast.

To demolish all creative thought in a cliché, say

the sentence out loud without pause.

Don’t question it; don’t sneer. Don’t ask:

Does it mean surrender, resignation, acceptance,

withdrawal, wisdom, abidance or indifference? 

You already know the answer.

Code for trade-off, the things that cannot change

not by will or effort, not by demanding, wishing, 

hoping, foot-stomping, screaming, crying or praying. 

Laziness, perhaps, or exhaustion, one preceding

the other, most likely, at intuiting the insurmountable.

 
He’s always late, never checks his messages when

he’s made a date to meet me, and snores so loudly

most nights I can’t sleep, and counts on my inability

to hold on to anger time after time, til I wonder

if he’s just playing me, holding me down, keeping me

in the invisible stockades of pilloried complaints,

usual ones like taken for granted and love me enough.

 
“Look, if you want something bad enough,” my mother

always said, “you’ll find a way to get it and keep it.” 

That nearly always sounded like truth, like something

right out of the good book of cause and effect and

Newtonian physics or the natural laws of divine free will

or perception–on the little brain bits we have to depend.

The whole a-will-a-way combo, the tritest of them all.

Except how do I know if I have accepted in wisdom, peace 

and knowledge what I cannot change, made a fair exchange 

or simply ducked and run without a step in the face of the 

inevitable, my presumed conclusion befitting the fatigue 

of too many, just too many reasonable compromises?

“Better not to ask,” she’d sometimes say.