La Mordida (The Bribe) Poem by Alfred Ramos

La Mordida (The Bribe)
Among your constant growing pains
You’ve congested your righteous motives in smoke chains
You have yet to learn to bite your tongue
And don’t realize you are no longer young
The better part of your youth
Was spent in your search for truth
But you pushed your wealth aside
Let your links to humanity weaken your pride
Your head has grown larger than yourself
Your spirit is growing stale on the shelf
If you no longer honor the search for wisdom
Then its’ futile to think you’ve won your freedom
And if your heart bleeds no blood
And your shoeless feet know no mud
Then you have been drained completely
Of the pursuit that once pushed you into liberty
The lust for goals beyond natures’ timetables
The frivolity of symbolic labels
That once turned heads to hear the news
That opened up new roads and avenues
Are gone with the young ideas you let steal away
While the nation sleeps away the middle of the day
Stereotypification shoveled chin high
And you don’t blink an eye
I speak of dying in the easiest of form
Like the eye of the storm
You are silence amid the noise
A treacherous move without poise
You’ve abandoned your history books
Expecting easy money with you saddened looks
But those looks will buy no pity
With no detours to the city
You will squeeze yourself of breath
And only bribe yourself to death