and i question how far i can go further.
how further, how farther can one feel
before feeling fear, before being betrayed
before sitting alone at a coffee shop wishing god's graces hadn't
skipped over him like a red checker piece
before experience eats him alive and pukes him up on the dingy tile floor
and sops him up with a mop at denny's like it's his final resting place.
i feel optimistic.
time passes clever, better when scents are in the room
that smell right, a nose pressed up against your face pleading for you
to love it, love him or her, and do it like it's the last time.
do things that make you sweat just a little so you know you're capable of producing more than just anger or fear or boring rationalizations that lead to missing out. i want my seconds spent golden like sepia, filthy like children rolling in the grass, i want my moments of soft delay when i'm not so afraid of silence and i can simply be, especially with company. like when the last song ends but you don't feel like getting up and flipping it over so it twists on its own, ricket then silent, ricket again but it's ok because we're still there, because in that moment i'm who i want to be. and i don't feel so afraid anymore
we can all be young again.
even after gravity strikes, skin sags and loss torments us
we can be graceful.
even the most careless of us, the one who knocks the vase over
and spills out every secret ever kept
and no longer feels alone.
if this is where it's at,
the beginning or the end
or smack dab in the middle,
i've done it well. my spirit's still there,
refusing to be crushed like a soda can no matter how many times
i tasted the sole of someone's dirty shoe
or felt like i could be the man in the denny's, helpless, eager for the ending.
i've done it well and i want to keep doing and reaching and yearning
and tapping the nose of the one in front of me and admitting i'm capable of being better this time at simply feeling, being, without the need for reasoning