u/ColdWinterInPrague

They would tell a child like me:

Don’t be like the rest.

Be gluttonous for study,

You could be the best;

Your mother,

Your father,

Were smart;

They’ll bend which way

For your head-start.

And so I did,

Learn and remember,

Learn until the big questions had humble answers,

And the face of life had lost its luster.

Learned about how priorities had been sown bent,

On meeting people who integrally lived

Whole and straight;

With no theory or craft;

Put the mirror on myself,

To learn a lesson one must be

Ready to change, even if in little ways:

I learned to learn, how the biggest insults and fears 

ignorance, 

delusion, 

naivety;

Were what made the

happy, 

successful, 

beautiful;

respectively exist.

Might be too late for me;

But the lesson at the end, 

was learned nonetheless.

I hear people say,

The world has gone insane;

As if they’re not part of it

And it isn’t part of them.

What I cannot understand is,

A body adrift, looked at itself,

With water rising and

unwilling to change;

Stared at insanity and

Declared it health.

I wish I could somehow, 

Make a portrait of you,

That felt remotely true:

But it takes more than an overlook to paint a view,

A canvas so wide or a word so concise,

To describe what’s irreductible

In the panorama of your eyes.

From core, bone and blood,

Smile, hands and voice,

Silhouette, movement, thoughts,

Memories, influence, 

Virtue and soul:

Inspiration, meaning,

A reason for living,

I can’t fathom 

how far back must I stand

For your reach to leave my sight.

You couldn’t tell up close but

This house is a mess,

Tripping on a bent carpet

To a sink full of half-drunk glasses

Might as well just leave it hanging 

by the phone, since

The honest have packed up and gone

The old world’s exhibit is an empty hall

And the whispering next door

Is just a roomba cleaning after the dog,

Something I heard

Is that both 

men and birds

Somehow share

A billion heartbeats

Before leaving earth,

Ain’t it something?

Seeing it numbered;

Fills me with regret,

How I should’ve

Crossed you sooner,

Few hundred million

Could’ve been

Better spent.