DEMOCRACY
by David Radavich
Who decides
the life you live?
Is it government,
corporations,
a religious cleric,
your parents,
your lover?
And how do you
permit yourself
to live with others,
to live with yourself?
Some kind of sharing
is inevitable,
some kind of voting,
informing and adapting.
We do not get to choose
being alive. We do
select our friends,
maybe our livelihoods,
our ways of being
moral and immoral,
rising in the morning
setting in the evening,
one among many
who must somehow
learn to co-exist
in this garden
of clambering flowers.