Asian Energy Advisors

For my first post of the year, I reproduce below a poem dedicated to several people I know here in the Philippines that will be spending 2008 “mastering their craft.” One is Walter

a compadre in Malaybalay whom I’ve never met in person but whose own end of year post entitled Life in the Plateau I found inspiring.

This poem is by Robert Bruce of Knife, Pen, Gun.

Loren Feldman (check him out below, you might want to listen to him more often) of 1938 Media calls Robert “a genius” and “the poet laureate of the web.”

ROI (Return on Investment)
by Robert Bruce | 10 December 2007

Ten years of deliberate
and tireless practice

That is one expert’s opinion
on what it takes
to master a craft

But we know that the cost
lies in much more
than just time

If you choose this mastery
you may end up working
to the exclusion of:

Weeknight television
and it’s unending unimportance

A new car
that turns over in the morning

What could have been
within other seductive alternatives

Overnight success
amputating the workbench

Sycophants and groupies
slithering on your ear

Three weeks in Spain
bringing life and a momentary rest

Downtown cocktail parties
murdering your precious hours

Large and regular paychecks
bringing options

The praise of man
poisoning the soul

The love of a woman
raising the dead

Some of these
all of these may be lost
as you labor

As you labor
for one of the only things
that cannot be taken from you
no matter who’s doing the taking

You will have chosen
the one thing
over the many

The well-made
over the third-rate

The enduring
over the sensational

And what will you be given in return?

A lusty and sturdy
body of work

A small kick against
the obscenity of death

And a fat middle finger
to the face of a culture
obsessed with
the
bottom
line