“Karna”
All my life I’ve felt like Karna,
The son princess Kunti abandoned in a river,
And because he was rejected by his mother as a babe,
As a man he rejected Gaia, the first mother;
He rejected the earth itself.
All my life I’ve felt like Karna,
Like it was me against the world,
And therefore, I waited for Gaia to come and grip my chariot’s wheel,
Just like she did with Karna’s;
She ended my rebellion against her, just like she did with Karna’s.
When this happened, I made many discoveries.
When I turned six, Mom made me go to kindergarten.
I walked into the big, white building,
And, with mom dragging me by the wrist towards my classroom,
I looked back at her red mustang sparking in the sunlight;
Mom opened my classroom’s grass-green door
And pushed me into the square, white room,
And then she left.
The first thing I saw was a chubby, old guy wearing blue Levi’s and a pink collared-shirt,
And the first thing the old man did
was harshly drag me in front of my classmates,
who sat in four rows of gray desks with stainless-steel legs;
He told me to say my name and how old I was,
And I said:
“My name is Kaleb and I’m six.”
Then some kid sitting in the last row yelled:
“you’re not six stupid your five,”
And I yelled back: “I’m six;”
then all the kids yelled back together:
“you’re not six stupid your five!”
All my life I’ve felt like Karna,
Like it was me against the world.
I picked up an empty desk
And tossed it at the kids,
And I truly didn’t care
While the gray desk flew through the air
Which one of the cacophonous chorus
It would come down and hit;
I did that for me because
No one wanted justice for me,
And I was hurt by them first in my opinion;
Right then their safety wasn’t as important as me,
And All my life I’ve felt like Karna,
Like it’s better to preserve my ego
Then it is to preserve the world.
That grey desk I threw
landed an inch away from the carpet,
Which was a sky blue
And the place the kids had retreated to;
In a flash my mom was dragging me by the wrist
Towards her red mustang sparkling in the sunlight.
Mom saved me from Gaia’s grip that day
My punishment was simply to go away
Form the school for good.
Then, not long ago, Gaia finally griped my wheel.
I was sitting on my mom’s white couch
And wearing a red shirt;
I was brutally punching through my mom’s black coffee table
Because all my life I’ve felt like Karna,
Like it was me against the world,
Because I wanted people to like me, but I forgot
I had to like myself first,
Which I hadn’t done since I threw that desk at those kids in kindergarten.
Then my mom’s cheek-bones became the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates.
Seconds later I felt it:
Gaia griping my chariot’s wheel,
And when I fell and landed head first on the unforgiving ground
the impacted was so hard I made a few discoveries:
Love is not just for me it’s everyone’s,
Justice is not just for me it’s everyone’s,
Safety is not just for me Its everyone’s,
And discovery is the process by which we learn that
Happiness is not just for ourselves;
It’s for everyone.
