The Year of Being 18

Is this supposed to be the apex?

Do you really consider this the epicenter?

Some two-thousand years of human progress,

And we’ve hardly left the arena.

It’s the same every year,

Repeating the Tiananmen Square of the America teenager.

Seek knowledge! Chase achievement! Pursue popularity!

But don’t think beyond the walls and why aren’t you in line?

Two dumb kids fall onto the bed in love,

Only to fall through the floor into the maternity ward.

Why did we even consider ourselves wise.

How did we ever consider ourselves invincible.

Arise! Oh those born with bright eyes and questions in mouth,

Make noise out loud and make it glorious,

Wield your innocence and clutch it like a sword

For yourself and your fellow warrior poets.

Alarm us all with how disarmingly easy it is

To have identity in the age of stressed anonymity,

With everyone wanting you to do or be something,

It’s your inaction that shines the brightest.

Somewhere to Long For

I long for a summer of beauty.
The heat may scorch my lungs and the wind may blister my skin,
But I have been without the sun for far too long.

I woke up to find myself here,
bathing in this summer night.
These woods open up and dance,
the trees creaking in unison.

Nothing is truly beautiful,
Without some measure of challenge,
So love will be our end ascent.

I have slept through the dark of winter,
Arisen into the beginnings of spring,
And walked into the halls of summer.

I am adrift and at peace.

A Difference Between Doubt and Despair

Let's be honest, it's easier to be cynical,
To take things as literal and strip of their meaning.
But don't you find it demeaning, to not believe in love?
That above all that there is, that there's no story behind the scenes?
Sometimes it's just hard to see, between you and me.

So why is hope something a little bit more than we stand?
We act with grand designs but then we create our own suffering.
Look, we all want to be something, that's all fine and great,
But we must move at a faster rate if we are ever to escape gravity
Or we'll all wake up with a cavity where our soul once lived.

We are all looking for that one special "experience"
So when we finally cross that distance we're tempted to trivialize it
Commercialize it so we aren't alone with the discovered truth about ourselves.
Ring all the bells, wave all the white flags, and hear your swan song of selling out.
If your devout faith is to doubt then you will find every way out of believing.

Alone at Night

A Week of Rain

You found love in the rain one Monday morning,
As you laughed beneath the warm spring storm
And your love stood by, in awe of you.

Tuesdays have never treated you well
As you fell out of love, vowing never to repeat it.
So you dried your hair and closed the door and that was that.

On Wednesday you longed for a place unseen by man
But grew worried that it would no longer matter it if you found it
So you found yourself haunting the same old streets at night.

Thursday was when your heart skipped a beat,
That brief second when you had slipped and lowered your shield.
You made a note not to let that happen again.

Friday found the rain carrying on and carrying over its business as usual
But now it lacked its warmth and sympathy as it leaned on your shoulders,
Just tears falling in time to burden your back.

Saturday struck you in a most unexpected way.
As you ambled around the house you found yourself breathing,
You had no recollection of having started or how long this had been occurring.

Sunday you tore out of the house, you had been pent up too long anyway.
The rain was still outside the house, waiting on you
To laugh and dance and love and fight for yourself once again.

And you did.

Fan Your Flames

You were born among blood and smoke and sparks and glory.
As your mother wept in awe at your arrival
Your family fell to reverence at her prayers over you.

You're a spark of fire, a spark of life;
Fan your flames for us now and hold us close
For we all grow colder when we're apart.

You took your fire in hand, cupping it around its glow.
You left and at night we could see your fire off in the distance,
We knew you had to leave but you let us know all was well.

You have grown old now,
Your proud embers have burned low but not out,
Signs of a life well lived and a fire well tended.

From your ashes rose a new fire, a new flame well tended.
It burns with your hue and burns with your intensity,
From fire to ashes and soon a fire rises again.

Calling Old Friends

Don't you dare,
Don't you dare settle for a life less extraordinary.
It's all right to be a mess and to be confused.
It's all right to be human and sometimes feel bruised.

It's not okay,
It's not okay to remain that way.
Forgive and forget and seek on.
Fight and triumph and remember how far you've gone.

Never forget,
Never forget how far you've come.
Take a risk on the people you will see.
Take a chance on the people who remember who you used to be.

Fields of Summer

Salt of the earth, sweat on your brow;
Faded glory born through sunlight and summer.

Jeans with rips, hearts on the mend;
Earth on your hands and sky above.

No boxes, no confines;
Limits belong to how far you can run.

Full of laughter, empty of change;
These warm nights hold nothing to fear.

Wind in our hair, your hand in mine;
Here there is warmth beyond the streets.

Backdoor: Prelude to an Elegy

The stars, are they talking to us tonight?

Do you think they will actually guide us?

Our shoes are on, laces tied.

You don your cap as I wear mine.

Our bags are packed and shouldered.

Do you think we are ready?

Is this the risk worth taking?

So long, lonesome crowded town.

Your lights always did shine too bright,

Your nights too loud, our dreams too soft.

As ready as we'll ever be, young as we need to be, and hope over everything.

Snow: Elegy in Second Movement

No one said it would be this heavy.

Our feet, the silence; the spectacle, 

No one said it would be this beautiful.

Our eyes, the lights, the risks

Of being let down ahead, in life, into snow.

Are you going on ahead? Does your pack tire you?

We shouldn't separate now, not much longer.

Over hills, over rivers, 

over caves below our feet where dark things dwell.

Under branches, under stars,

Under the sun burning away on the horizon. 

I'm glad we're staying the course.

Still

So much happened in that stillness.
The dust danced in the light,
As the stars folded in after the night.

The silence roared all around us.
As heavy as all the universe's matter,
As brittle as all the hopes inside her.

Can someone ever be fully shattered?
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
The best has yet to come for us.

To The Sea

We should not measure ourselves next to skyscrapers,
Monuments,
Mountains,
People,
Perceptions.

We must look to the ocean to measure who we are,

Limited,

Living,

Small,

Strong.

For man will know his true self when faced with the infinite.

Going Home Now

No one ever teaches you how to be uncomfortable,
How to look intriguing while lining the walls at social events,
How to look good while scanning the host's books,
Or how to gracefully catch the eye of someone pretty.
No one gives lessons on how to survive being awkward.

How do you deal with that, that moment when...
You shift your drink back and forth between hands,
Struggling to recall the person's name you met just now.
Responding with "Fine, thank you." when people ask your name.
How long do I have to stay to be socially acceptable?

Old Americana

We were in limbo that year, that 4th of July.
Young enough to swing on monkey bars,
Old enough to realize hearts break.
They bleed red, red, red white blue.

So let's wear these clothes,
I have my tie, tied with honest mistakes,
You have your shoes burning red across the wood.
Were these signs of the times? Signs of growing up?

Old enough to drink, not old enough to regret.
You were promised four unforgettable years
Designed to be enjoyed best when forgotten
With me still on the monkey bars, upsidedownrightsideup

I swung down and into the next part.
Next tune, next room, next scene repeat
Full skies, chances, and empty cars
Against crowded bars, faded dreams bound in scars.

Do you ever wake, wrapped in faded glory,
Residual warmth as you leave one room
And enter the next adjacent memory.
Morning rises, curtains fall, did you find your star?

Elegy of Footfalls

It's older here.

Quieter. 

Do you feel as small as I do, as you shoulder your pack.

Your breath floats back to me and mine behind.

Trains, silent in the woods.

Sad things dwell here, last of their kind.

And we will all be the poorer for their passing.

We are far from home and we carry it with us.

Hearth and heart and how great we are

Passing through here together.

This is what we want.

Can you even begin to dare to describe something incontestably undefinable.
You can't can you.
As sure as the ground is beneath you and as sure as it will fall out below you.
And you will be lowered down and raised again.
Light of angels dark of hell.
Ad Absurdum Ad repetita Ad nauseam

Don't you dare.
Don't.
We.
Dare.
Don't we though.

So, why do we?

River Banks, May 1944

I've never seen you look smaller than that evening.
In comparison of course.

The first rock you threw, with hues of green and white, skipped the longest.
The second rock shone the brightest but sank fast.
The third rock you held on for a long time before throwing it across to the other side.
The fourth rock you picked slipped through your hands, I almost felt bad as I laughed.
The fifth rock you picked up had something gross under it so you quickly let it drop.
The sixth one you pulled out of your pocket but you put it back after all.
The seventh cut your finger and crimson fell with it back into the river.

What did you do after that?

Hallowed Houses (Hymns for Friends)

Death passes through here but has yet to truly linger,
Not in any of my stays anyways.
Perhaps it is the brightness of their hearts
That for now hold it all at bay.
Until I can no longer do so, I will seek refuge here
Among the messes of being human.
Because am I really more than a mess?
This family of friends realize it,
As we break bread and hearts together,
I love them all for it all and all we have.

Adagio in D Minor

What will it be like?
To meet God.
Will He be an infinite monolith
Of terror and awe?
Or in the darkness of nothing,
A spark of immeasurable hope?
Either way, I will be both alone
and unfathomably exposed before the Beginning and the End.

Writing is worse than speaking

For Speaking is making words into orphans, ships without anchors or ports.
Writing is making words into monuments, bricks and mortar and all.
You can conveniently forget orphans, just let them be where you fled them.
But how easy can you escape monuments when you live in their shadows?

Bonfires

Sometimes, in the darkness of the tunnels,
We have to whisper "No." to the dark.
We have to rise up with sword and shield 
For beyond our bonfires, so small in the dark,
We find skeletons and worse.
Fight we must, for foes lay ahead and behind.
To die a thousand times means rising again a thousand and one.