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WISE ASS

You know this person!
In middle school his perfect sarcasm
seems funny and bold and  wise to our ears, 
makes adults and institutions seem hopelessly
inept, disingenuous, insecure 
By high school, however, his wise ass
negativity wins lots of first dates but
never real girlfriends, even the bad girls
back off, and the jocks and jazz drummers
have better things to do than hear a bitter
monologue about the social studies teacher,
the new librarian’s hair-do, the gym
teacher’s twitching left eye
In college or the service
he gets to see the nation, gets to 
travel overseas and build a bulging catalog
of every quirk and fault in every community
and culture – the languages and the hair,
the religions and the traditions are simply stupid
or depraved, insipid or immoral, patently unworthy
of the exploratory tendencies of the intellect
or the heart

Newly in the workforce
he is the unanimous selection for union representative
but elected only once because he actually loves fighting,
not negotiating, for the salaries and the benefits
that his colleagues surely deserve
The neighbors are sure 
that his wife is a saint, that the children are scarred,
everyone hoping that she moves to New Zealand
and the kids change their surnames, melt into the
fabric of Chattanooga or Dubuque, perhaps Orono
or Las Cruces leaving him alone to nail everyone he
encounters with his porch signs and t-shirts, his
infallible ability to see through good intentions
to the deceitful, the liberal and the miserable 
among us who make everything so wrong!

In the senior housing complex
he has friends for three months
then takes his meals alone in the company
of others, his only real exercise the occasional 
walking back of an asinine comment or a bitter
observation, and when moved to assisted living, 
his behavior is so bad that staff wishes out-loud
for his early demise, a desirable situation 
which in spite of their strong commitment to the
God of all good things, they successfully engineer
for the good of all concerned!
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