By Prem Gongaju

I am not here to tell you I told you so.
Only a half-wit will say such a thing.

But I would like to reiterate some content
Of our confabulation from a while back.

You will live the life of an olive in a bowl of salad—, a salad
Tossed relentlessly, its bedraggled contents flailing their fate.

You will be called ‘weak’ and ‘stupid’, but you put up with the abuse,
For you felt out of place beyond the ken of your magnanimous mien.

You, forsaking the old family and friends, will join
The Kool-Aid club feeling safe in the boisterous numbers.

You will lose the red copper pennies you earned by the sweat of your brow,
The pennies bearing the bust of Abraham Lincoln, who channeled the Apostles

Matthew and Mark: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Like the flailing, flopping eagle trying to rise on its one wing alone.

Boring you with the mindless repetition of ‘what is past and passing’
Is not my aim. My aim is to help you enjoy the Dogberryism

While staying alert against the bootlegger’s plot.
It might save you from getting shot.

Should you miss the due, they stand ready to bleed you
With the cruelest cut.

So, addiction is bad. Bigly bad. It robs your critical faculty
To tell right from wrong.

Hooked on the bootlegger’s brew, you become their pawn.
They send you on a mission to rent the fabric of humanity.

So, my brothers and sisters, my allies and adversaries,
Please give up the hooch.

One more thing: You are not weak, You are not stupid.
And mind the people singing the Henley hymn in Murica —

“I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.”