a young man
/ lost

and then a voice
/ do not tire of me

for I will bring many things to delight and
/ astound you

//

grown now
/ cynical with age

the promise fallen
/ flat like fresh
/ paper

all the while
/ a nearby smile steadily
/ moving closer

There is a certain fragility to kindness, an
impatient expectation of a return on
your investment

Expecting summer, I
choke down terror that
walks alongside convention

"oh, I'm just here for a
little while, saving
a bit of money so
I can do what
makes me feel
alive"

everyone stuttering,
gilded cages pieced
out of garbage

the irony settles like a cloud

to escape this world, I
need to save a bit more
money

I'm slightly out of
practice, a bit bent
out of shape like a
paper clip faced with
Rhode Island's taxes

at first glance, it might
seem as though I have
forgotten all I
once knew

first glances are rarely
accurate

what I do know is the
things that make you
you in your own
words, things like
cooking or
poetry or
smiles

these things don't die, they
hibernate until you're
smart enough to
wake them up

every few years, look
back on your prior
hopes with
disdain

how naive you were
then, but surely
you know
better now

your future self laughs.

the real world, the world of business and
coffee and hurried hallway "how are you"s is
brown and gray and
stuffy

so I sit in my corner
and silently explode
into color

you kept to yourself

and that makes everyone wonder, now
that you're gone

and I tried to explain that sometimes there's
nothing you can do to change
someone's mind, no sense
wondering whether a
simple good morning
would have kept
you around

hindsight is 20/20, but
nobody saw that coming