Lost a piece of a me
amidst this life
of stable work
and responsibility.

Gone are the days
that I slept the sun away.

Gone are my nights
of staying awake.

I was reckless, and a blowhard fool.

Wandering that veiled path
of apathy and altered mindsets
robbed me of my love for family.
But it granted me words,
I found poems everywhere
while lost in that haze
of clouded adolescence.

I wanted to be Bukowski,
I wanted to be Keidis.
I wanted to be Dylan.

I gaze back at myself sometimes,
the boy I used to be.
The twenty-something ****-up
that hadn't a dime to his name,
that hadn't a care in the world.
I gaze back and wonder
if there was a piece of me there
that got lost in the transition
between boyhood and man.
Something left behind that
used to truly define what
I believed in and
what believed in me.