We’re running out of time, wasting it
On *** and money and food and sleep.
And we sometimes forget to be happy.
We forget about important things
Like crowns made out of dandelions and kissing in the rain.
But I think I have figured it out.
I had to retrace my steps, start from the beginning

“When I was a kid I used to cut my wrists”

and if that’s not bad enough

I finally grasped that everyone else did too

And I can’t even remember why I wanted to die

But when YOUR daughter is found dead

pumped full of pills

and hate

How do you tell your wife?

do you even remember to cry?

Light up a cigarette

Pour yourself a drink

you try so hard to feel something so you won’t have to think

about the mortgage, the baby, the unemployment checks that stopped

coming last month.

And you’re bored.

But LIFE is not something that you watch.
I get confused when I hear complaints
about the kid next door
because he’s playing his guitar too loud

But his neighbors
never sit and enjoy the music.

There was a dark Friday
When eighteen thousand people were buried or never found in Japan,
and I heard people safe in America saying,
“well, the earth was really overpopulated.”
While I shed a tear for every single soul that would never get to go home again.
And it still didn’t feel like enough.

I’m still trying to figure it out but I know that
We’re just complex connections
of molecules and nerve endings
and blood cells, protons, neutrons.
And we’re NOT going to live forever.

And it’s not our fault that we can’t understand that there is no time to be worried

There is only feeling.
Scared feelings and blue feelings and numb feelings
and the blending of these things,
FEElings

finally create this thing we call love
and no, we don’t understand it.
all we know are
*** and money and food and sleep
and sometimes love gets lost in the days
and no, we don’t always remember that it’s there


I am forced to watch Hate being passed around the circle like a bottle of cheap wine
and everyone takes a sip, because it’s what you do.

And that’s when I plug my ears

contemplating why God didn’t give us instruction manuals

but I’ll try my best to figure it out