Ninety-Nine and One Hundred
There are one hundred things I wish to do
but ninety-nine I never will it seems; they’re
not dreams so much as wishes and urges,
conscious and clear, not fantasies at all;
they’re real, as real as life and air and my
beating heart, and they’re mine – all mine
because no one else could do what I wish
to do, or would want to it seems. Not all – just
some – would admit such things; frustrations
and hopeless hopes are what the ninety-nine
are to others and the one done – the one
done over and over again – becomes routine,
monotony the others call real, ordinary, life.
Jesus left the ninety-and-nine to search for
the one, in some twisted appeal to his
everyone is important, everyone matters,
everyone gets a trophy gospel of me,
myself and I that numbers hairs, dresses
flowers better than Solomon, and offers
funerals for every sparrow that succumbs,
while the boring ninety-and-nine never leave
home, never leave each other, never explore,
never risk, never have anything to regret,
never live; like the prodigal’s older brother
who wanted a fatted calf for – what, staying
home and never returning to life in his
father’s eyes?! There is no fatted calf for
never trying, never dying, never living again.
James Callahan 