What does this poem mean?

[cynthia]

Can anyone tell me what this poem means? Anything at all would help. What anything in it means?


Confession
By Suzanne Wise

I had my faults.
I had my so-called desires.
I remained open to temptation.
I argued with my colleagues.
I did not reach 100 percent
in my assignments. But I was no pry
pole, I was subsidiary. I was aspiring
to cog. I wanted to be a gullible
sheep or a rowdy-dowdy shepherdess
or a shamefaced sheepdog.
When I learned what I had to be,
I sat down on my luggage set
and wept. Then I unpacked. I decorated.
I raised the roof. I flew my kite.
I removed all the skulls and thieves.
I told my wise leaders where to sponge.
I was less than resistant. I was more than bold. I was beyond naked. I was technicolor.
I was a brilliant butcher, an innovativestreetwalker, a saucy sales manager.
I knew a good stogy, a fine lace teddy.I lived for love. I erred accordingly.
I assumed the world condoned my stunts. It’s clearer today.
I was misunderstood; I was in-the-know everyone else wantedout of.
Today there are no traces of erasures, and no qualms, no realwrongs.
I made judgments for the bestand by the standards of the time.
Now that it’s over I must beg for attention.
I have been robbed of the limelight that comes with responsibility.
I can only imagine how hard it must be for you to believe me, I mean, to hold blame. I mean, to be you.

[Hawkman]

Essentially this is a poem about coming to terms with a mid-life crisis. Suzanne Wise was born in 1965 and grew up in an America virtually in the trows of a social revolution: The civil rights movement, Vietnam and it's aftermath. Hers was a generation where some believed they could shape a new world (doesn't every new generation believe this?) and some would have been content to just get by, be the cog in the machine, earn their bread and live their lives in anonymity. The poem laments how childish dreams and fantasies of what it means to be an adult, are shattered by the responsibilities of actually being one. At an age where children are old enough to be critical of achievement (or lack of it) it looks back and laments failures and justifies life choices. It is an everyman/woman poem of disillusionment.

Does that help?

It's a pity you couldn't have maintained the original line breaks when putting this up because it spoils how it reads, but it can be found here:

http://www.alicejamesbooks.org/pages/book_page.php?bookID=119

I think it's rather a good poem.