My teacher asks for the theme,
But I don’t know how to answer
I know and I know that
A theme is or is not one word,
A common thing, a binding spell
A theme is or is not an instruction,
Told by the character’s actions,
Shown in carefully crafted consequences.
A theme is or is not a quality,
Something which defines a character,
Which determines the course of the story
It is or is not more than one sentence.
It is or is not subjective to the reader.
It is or is not, so I don’t know the answer.

But I could tell you about the Little Chinese Seamstress
About blind obsession,
About jealousy, about wonder
Would that be enough? Would that be enough?
I could tell you about how reading is so personal,
Its effect on one
Can not be understood by another
Would that be enough? Would that be enough?
Or how skill is developed by tragic experience
How learning comes from failing to learn
Would that be enough? Would that be enough?
Or if I told you that the quality of a book
is only as good as its final passage,
If I told you that
a story shouldn’t be told until its last word,
Bound by something so profound,
The book must be reread, reanalyzed
Delving into the intricate mind of the author,
With full control over life and reality,
With the power to make one word thousands,
A detail into a novel,
Anything into anything without writing it down,
Because if you can understand what the author was thinking,
Then the author was not thinking at all
Would that be enough?
Could knowing be enough?

If you asked an author
To name to you one of their themes,
Do you think they’d know the answer?
Do you think they’d care what you mean?

Is it more valuable to the student
To understand or to define?
Is it more telling of the mind
To describe an impact,
Or to save time?

Let me go back to school,
Oh please,
Let me go back.
The halls felt so hollow
As we went from class to class
Let me go back
to lectures and tests
instead of “I don’t know”s
and “haven’t been told”s
and “we’ll figure it out as it goes”
Let me go back
to my day to day schedule
my hour to hour maps
to knowing what comes next
Let me go back
to friends and fun and teenage things
to not fearing face to face meetings
the constant talk of death
Let me go back
Let me relax
Instead of watching case numbers and
Death Tolls
notifying my phone three times a day
Let me think of anything else
Oh Please,
Let me go back.

Wilderness in the brightest light
Imagination that always takes flight
Never will it end for all of time
For it shaped the universe in its prime

Chronology has no place here
With the fantasies of fun not fear
No one will let out a tear nor prayer
Knowing they are safe here in nowhere

Fellow feelings
flake the air
Frosted flowers
falling down
Funny faces
frowning fairs
Follow fearless-
ly front of them
Fondly faking
faking friends
Foreign feelings
Fellow feelings

In a far away land, a long time ago,
there was a revolt in the kingdom of Nah.
The people were tired of the king’s dark ways,
and forced him to make a change.
“I do not wish to harm my land,
I hate to hear my people cry,
so I will change my ways to appeal to you,
and to prove it, I will build my castle from glass”
Now the people could watch him work,
And monitor all he did.
Assured that their king was honest,
the people went about their days.
But the king was harsh,
The dungeons were full,
Still the people would say,
“If his ways are bad,
Then why would he put them on display?”
Taxes rose, corpses piled,
And the kingdom fell to ruin.
When the people asked
“What has happened?”
A wise woman said to them,
“You turned the castle to glass,
But what about the king?”

An hour away, a petal falls
A petal, a petal, a petal
They fly to Utah, they fly to Maine
They fly to Brazil, they fly to Spain
A petal falls, a petal falls.
Watch them drift, watch them land
They are passed from hand to hand
Across our minds, across our home
We watched it grow, we let them go
A petal, a petal, a petal

I heard the wind rustle the trees,
Yet I saw but stillness in the leaves
I heard the songs of little birds,
But saw no feathers amongst the green
The ground was laid with footprints of fellow men
But I followed in circles,
And I found no one to take these steps
The ponds rippled with no fish,
The grass croaked with no throats
Then when I left the lonely living woods,
I found a wall with no end
Too tall to be climbed,
Too strong to be broken
I walked the wall for half an eternity,
I walked each trail and path for another
I found no start or finish
No entrance,
No exit,
No one and nothing
It was me,
and I was it.