TAKE THAT! Take that feeling! Now engulf your life in people who painfully express that very sentiment so brilliantly that after hearing their words you find that you really didn't understand those ideas much to begin with at all and you feel lesser for it.

Now flash forwards 20-30 years: You're now a caretaker of your remaining parent, their health in a terminal spiral of decay after the loss of the first. You still work full-time, your own kids are growing older and out of touch as they explore their own lives. You are somewhat estranged with your own partner as the whole affair has been an unrelenting and daunting persistence of sheer will alone. You can't remember the last time you have had physical intimacy and you find you mind veering to the very notion of it even less.

In some outlet store, you are shopping for clothing for the ward that long ago brought you into life, you go though a lot these days, you don't need anything fancy. At this point the children's section really offers you you best bang for your buck for what you need. You'll shuffling though Sponge Bob PJ pants and your hands freeze as your ears pull the emergency break!

You hear THAT song! Twenty years later, the melody softly swaying in your atmosphere!

All at once, all of those things add up, each moment, each song; friends, ideas, ambitions--it hits you! You remember yourself--not as you 'are' *but as you *were and all that you hoped for all that you desired and then racing forth you are immediately and un-consensually assailed by all the things that have torn you from that trajectory.

You find yourself so alone for everything that was and the sorrow is punctuated by how clearly that purpose, that 'meaning' meant to you at that time.

But, the Squidworth PJ pants seem most appropriate. Perhaps there is still some lazy, leftover take-out in the fridge....

With half the world ablaze
And the other half under water
                 I gaze at a beautiful sunset
                 And wonder why I am so lucky.

With half of the world now starving
And the other half made newly homeless
                 I sit in my comfy two-story
                 And wonder why I should deserve it.

With half the world hating each other
And the other half crying for peace
                 I sit with my pen and blank paper
                 Hoping somehow to fix it with verse.

I’ll write for the fires to burn themselves out.
I’ll write for the floods to abate.
                I’ll write for the hungry a banquet.
                Write refugees a new home.

I must write an end to the hatred.
I must write a way to find peace.
  I must write to solve all the problems
   That bleed endless ink to my pen.

It wants to compose lines of beauty
Not pity for those so abused.
  It wants to paint scenes of agreement
   Not outlining tallies of evil.

It wants to share themes that enrich us
Written in Poetry’s creative blood.
   Will this moment arrive in my lifetime -
     My subscription to miracles sadly expired
ljm

A strange pattern for
writing has came
to me lately.
The skeletons of
poems form when I
lie down for a nap.
Sleep always calls,
and bones want to
dance and grow skin.
Lilacs bloom, and I feel
the inner thigh of
eternity, soft and wet.

I can't get any rest.
I have to jot down the
notes or they turn
to ashes and blow away
Or, they are buried deep in
mud and slumber,
impossible to dig up.

I sleep with a notebook and
pen, as I drift off,
I whisper to the tortured
bones,
don't cry, and try not to worry.
I'll bring you to life.

I'm just a poet,
wouldn't you know it
I lace my lines, then boldly throw it.
I spill my ink where silence grows,
twisting truth in rhythmic prose.

I flip the script, I drop the beat,
with crooked rhyme and dancing feet.
I stitch my pain in stitched-up verse,
a soft-spit spell, a velvet curse.

I break the meter, bend the frame,
then tag my thoughts with fire and flame.
I glide through grit and velvet air,
my voice a scar, my breath a flare.

I speak in echoes, glitch and glow it.
I'm just a poet;
Wouldn't you know it?
A wild-mouth priest of streets and skies,
who walks on words and never lies.

I left, not because I didn’t care,
but because care felt like a
t   i   g   h   t   r   o   p   e    w   i   r   e
strung across your moods.
I tiptoed,
hoping not to f
                              a
                               ­      l
                                           l
into the c          m of your silence.
                  h    s
                     a

You say I chose.
And maybe I did.
But choosing peace doesn’t mean I never wanted you.
You wished I had stayed.
I wished you had seen me before the goodbye.

You speak in switches;
Yes, no.
Blame, regret.
Like you're still rewriting the ending.
Hoping the script forgives the sting.

You say you never betrayed,
but what do you call the slow erasure of effort?
The absence that smiled and said it wasn’t personal?

I remember the warmth.
I do.
But I also remember the chill that came after you wanted me to read between lines that were never written.

You weren’t my boss, no.
But you were a map I couldn’t follow.
Every step felt like trespass.
So I drew a door
|. |
and walked through it.

And still, I think of your games.
But I don’t play anymore.

Even something distant
Can give enough light,
Longer than just a while,
Carrying vivid, tender moods,
Rising like green plants,
Despite the cold, acid rain.

A hypnotic, sweet mantra,
A grateful murmur,
Whispered my true name,
Coming on time,
Before I closed the door.

I am at home now.
In a quiet zone,
On my piece of uneven,
Creaky floor,
Grounded by gravitation,
Free from messy thoughts,
Just to save the plumb line,
Not to collapse inward
Into an inner gap
Of what it should mean.

I shift my wardrobe
Of emotional scripts
To clean a tame mess,
Collected into short breaths,
Like colorful, sharp stamps,  
Justifying a fading reason to stay,
rather than give up and go away.

Yes, I know that I can.
So, what am I afraid of?
That I am ready
To drop the weight
Of past attachment,
To feel the lightness
Of being loved?
To accept human warmth,
Enfolding peacefully
A fractured existence.