A Letter to Daughter, in seven parts: Part Six

Part Six:

My daughter, how I love you so and in saying this I feel my selfishness.

I hope you see by now the avarice of parental love.

Our families, our siblings, our cousins, but most heavily our children are iterations from our genetic line

We are called to be concerned; so it is in this gluttony people say,

“My child is my number one priority.  My child is my purpose.”

I have always pitied and to a degree found contempt for these parents.

For to enroll in the school of such ideologues, is to park one’s brain in a trash receptacle

Volition therein becomes the luggage of one’s child;

One is worshiping one’s genes; the gene’s lust is our lust.

We become enemies of the arts; we become institutional animals of the soup.

I strive in my way to be a contrarian, a dissident, a middle finger to the establishment

Of my own complacency that what was known and accomplished before my life,

Was enhanced not as genes seek, not as my genes seek, but as we seek as an interconnected one

In the space of thought carried not biologically, but blowing in the wind as questions

The endless stretch of questions one being may ask, can be born as fire in the belly

Of the next, who may not be his or her progeny, but of a gene-carrier across oceans

Like the bottle the worthy message rests not over the pillow of a choreographed

Clear Channel playlist, but to the rebellion of an overthrown stock market

Occupying the minds of those seeing the disparity between those who are capable of hearing

The drumbeat and seeing the nudity and those deaf and blind regurgitating nonsensical chatter

Plopping walrus-like upon the islands of congress lumbering in blubber gnawing with tusks

Valuing showmanship above substance potting and plotting for eternity in the red tide of false currencies

Make no mistake this shoreline of mammals is us; we are not an us and them; there is no them.

There is no battle, but the one in your mind; your choice in each fragment of time you inhabit;

You choose which card to discard, which play to lie to the table,

Which vulnerability to display to and to exploit in others; this is our playground.

Oh to tell you the answer was heaven; to be kind, gentle and abiding

To be ritualistic, acquiescent, malleable to the established doctrines so that you may find

Solace and reprieve in the routine of school, church, work, and family home

Some parents including your mother may offer such menu options,

So many of your friends and enemies will chomp the bit of such reined plows

But my daughter, I offer you this letter, with no promises of its absolute truth as they may advertise

I offer nothing, but what you already possess; the seed to a question you have not asked,

An inquiry which I have not asked, an interrogative no one has asked

At least not that we know, so I suggest you read until you find these orphaned questions

Begging in the libraries of Mumbai, the forests of Costa Rica, the plains of Tanzania

The mountains of Tibet, the islands of New Zealand

The swamps of Louisiana, and the stars of other galaxies. 

I offer the little magic I have found

So that you may ask, you may play with the spark within. 

Beyond, beyond, beyond

 To part 7