My question started with Rives and Op Talk.
Only an idea at first, a spark,
convention that I can not help but mock
because spark rhymes with hark and bark and narc.

Write to make the bones of Shakespeare shiver
and this is awful but who is to say
that a young artist cannot deliver,
cannot produce a lyrical ballet?

It is not important. But it is special
because I cannot speak and speak and speak
and the world is not always so gentle
to warrant an outlook so very bleak.

Not all of the lines will always rhyme like
A sonnet sonnet sonnet sonnet has to.

Sirens will sit, stand, sprint, and lay with you,
if you let them.
Sirens whisper of an incoming life
while sometimes, on the same night,
discussing one that is outgoing.
Sirens have told the people of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and Dresden
that their air would be turned to ash,
sooner rather than later.
Sirens pull you to the side of the road
to tell you that you're going too fast,
so maybe slow down a little.

Now modern Sirens have taken the face of man,
the voice of man.
They whisper not to the sailors;
but to the people in their cars,
in their places of work
and in their homes.
(buy my product)
(become a member)
(Listen to Me.)
Maybe control is swaying
and man is being changed,
persuaded to
sit, stand, sprint and lay
with Sirens.

Bear with me,
but we are the generation of social consciousness and laziness and internet and poetry and netflix and instant messaging and everything-at-your-fingertips and catchy pop music and brand names and

we often lose sight of what is important,
so I'll keep it short.

Put your phone away,
sit outside for a while.

I've been climbing that hill for a long time
Every time I ascend on my way home,
     I see the red and blue lights that were
     strewn across my lawn
just the one night.
     And I still don't know what that means,
that I'm reliving the one moment
before my world came crashing down.
Maybe it's my mind trying to return to the uncertainty,
     sitting in that little blue car just seconds before
     catching a glimpse of paramedics trying to
breathe life into my dad's lungs.
              Maybe I'm trying to return to a full family
or maybe it's just a memory
              that won't go away

until I stop climbing that



hill.

When my dad had a heart attack,
              His friends bought him a LazyBoy
                                                reclining chair,
as if to say

"rest up, buddy

we've got your back."
                                        Now a man myself,
               I know that my friends

would pitch for a chair,
too.

With leaders and life coaches
          mental doctors
they must have discovered the
                                                                                 Right
way to live.

With dreams broken down
crushed into a dust,
and structurally analyzed,
                                              they must know.
We exist from 9 to 5, monday to friday,
breathing in and out only for a

bi-weekly

paycheck.

Our lives revolve around
                                             one thing.
Religion has taken a backseat to this new obsession
that people fight and die for.
Now, we battle over
paper and metal,
pressed into coins, printed as bills.
Kind of makes you wonder
why you are
really

here.