#title Let Us Now Praise Idle Men (and Women)
#author Suzanne Freeman
#SORTauthors Suzanne Freeman;
#date 2020
#source [[https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/405-winter-2020/let-us-now-praise-idle-men-and-women]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-01-30
#notes Fifth Estate #405, Winter, 2020

It’s time to celebrate

the Late-sleepers

and merry drinkers,

the loafers & slackers & slow-pokes.

The ones on permanent vacation,

unhurried and unworried,

the rose-smellers & growing-grass watchers, what harm

did they ever do?

How about a cheer

for siesta snoozers

and Lazy losers,

the long joke-tellers

and deep toke-takers,

life is too short

for conformity.

Let’s give a prize

to the underachievers, the shiftless shirkers, the less-than-full-potential workers,

the Laid-back quitters,

the mushroom-sitters & hookah-huffers,

they never started a war

nor enslaved anyone.

We could give a parade

for the noon-time nappers & ne’er-do-wells,

but they’d sleep right through it

so let’s leave them alone.

They are slumbering

toward a higher calling,

they are poets of their own lives

seining the sea of their dreams

for the meaning of bliss.

Suzanne Freeman lives in the Texas Hill Country where she writes and practices internet avoidance to preserve her humanity. Her poetry has appeared in publications ranging from <em>Social Anarchism</em> to <em>Bird Watcher’s Digest</em>. Her award winning dystopian novella, <em>Omnibo</em>, is available from Texas Review Press.