Today's poem is What will you do? by Caroline Chong. It is read by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc.
What will you do?
Posed to me, a child
who knows not in the sense
which they inquire
Birds thrown from nests
They get to find their wings
They get to freely explore
Learning and living on their own
As children are asked
What will you do?
Plummeting into broken systems
Head first into the abyss
Nightmares are not filled with monsters
Only regrets
They don't hide under beds
They sit at desks wishing for time
Life is a fickle thing
Fragile and flirtatious
"you only live once"
no, you live everyday and only die once
It is too precious to be spent
tainted by caution and fear
for time is always running away
and you are given so little
They say to follow your heart
But my heart is dancing in the sky and waves
She flies and she wanders
And doesn't want to follow the path they have paved
Yet still they ask me
waiting for my answer to fit
I cannot follow my heart
I have to follow their rules
So when they say
"What will you do?"
I can only think
What will I not?
With the time I am given
With the age that I am
With the money I have saved
With the knowledge I've learned and will
What can I not?
Often they are confused
Pause and rephrase
What will you do for your future?
Yet my answer remained unchanged
I will make the best of what I am given
I will follow my transient heart
Until she stops her booming rhythm
But this is met with scrunched eyebrows
A retort
A scold
A lecture
So I guess back to the drawing board
But how should I know how to answer
when we speak different languages
Our perspectives off kilter
Withering away behind screens to get ahead
Years lost filling out worksheets deemed important
An object indebting our race
As sullen systems suffocate our miracle
So it seems foolish to spend my life
Doomed and stumbling down a path
littered with traps to lose my wandering spirit
And oh so fleeting time
But still, now that I am "of age"
They ask with eyes open wide
Waiting for my answer to:
"What will you do?"