I stood watching her from the left of the lights
Tiny arms and legs
She was
My little Swan!
I danced in shadows
As she danced in light
Mother and daughter
She is magnificent!
Her golden curls flying
Tights sparkling
Toes, barely touching the stage

Mother passes the light
To the dancing daughter
And all is as it should be
She caught but a glimpse of me
In my selfish shadows
Dancing in her glory
Our eyes locked for the briefest of seconds
She danced on........

pendulum petals
pieces of flesh
fall off my bones
faring gravity
the closer I get
the lighter I am
my right
my left
flowery
legs
          stain
       the
    stage:
          *He loves me.
          He loves me  not.

The right person,
the wrong time!
The right script,
the wrong line!
the right poem,
the wrong rhyme!
and a piece of you,
that was never mine

It has been said that life is too short to spend in social trenches.

The No-man's land of daily civil warfare.
We want to be liked, we want to be understood, we want to be edgy without offending.
We want approval of the masses, we want to be desired and chased.
Validation.

Validation.

We want the want, the fame, the love, the praise, the opinions and ideas.
The winning side.

We wake up everyday and look out across the social media minefields,

The front line Social Justice Warriors, the Alternative Right guerillas.

The mass armies of the Left and Right.

The Anarchists now sip tea with the Libertarians.

Topic to topic we send our troops to fight over hill over dale!
We try, we pick our battles, we fight on all fronts.
The winning side seems so clear yet the shells never stop.
Dropping alongside, bombs carpet or drone.

We have the thousand yard pseudo thought.

Plant your feet firmly on the ground, we need boots on the air,
We need planes in the sky and ships sending reinforcements.

Modern day field intel from a not so secret spy social network.
Mid level cluster bombs of thought and quick bit pieces of food rations for thought.

Mustard gas conversations that choke the throats of some while others inhale and laugh.

Drone strike incoming, retreat from the view of public, scorched earth policy.

Some wave the white flag out of exhaustion only to go fight another battle on some far away topic.

Neutral ground hard to find, teetering on the edge of a war, always ready to fight.  
The cycle repeats and yet those who have learn’ed now pick and choose when to fight.
They sit on the sidelines and wait for the right time to strike, there may not a way to retreat all the way but there is a way to cause the most effective change in the lease of painless ways.

Life is too short to spend in social trenches, it is too short to jump from battle to battle, it is not worth the energy spent fighting the endless armies day in and day out and let life go by because you get lost in the fog of war.

To quote Douglas Adams “I’d rather be happy than right”.

Strong words that should be said more.

When all it took
For me to erupt in flames
was just a tap of sound
escaping his lips

It took the whole world
to keep this heart from stripping
down in all it's glory
and swallow him with bare temptations
to make him mine

And mine alone.