130)
What is it?
What makes you thump?
What makes your heartbeat more
than say, just a little faster?
Or better yet,
what blows your hair back,
or what puts the feeling
in your soul,
like the kind that gives you
a reason to stand up and shout,
or better yet,
when was the last time
you did that?
Stand up and shout . . .
Where is it?
Where is that bit of your heart
that needs more than
just our daily bread,
and where is that part of you
that can leap through the air
and be wild again?
Life can be dying alive sometimes
or, life can be living out loud.
There is a line to cross
and some choose not to dare
and some people don’t care
what has to be done,
because they choose to live
and not die while being alive.
“This is the way.”
But –
Which way do you choose?
131)
Albeit brief,
this is it.
This is life and this is our everyday existence,
one second after the next.
There are people who walk the line
and never ask,
or never question,
or dare, or break the rules
and there are people who never let go,
they never go crazy, and never reach
for the high highs, and maybe
this works for them.
Maybe
There are people who want more
but they surrendered already
and their drive to live, love, laugh and learn
was squashed by an unwanted life,
or existence.
and now,
people like this are fine to live flat,
or be cozy with mediocrity
and perhaps their ideas
of wildness would be mundane
or mindless to me
or to anyone else, — but hey,
no one ever put a gun to your head
and said that you have to be happy.
Then again,
there’s no law out there
that says you have to be miserable
either.
You dig?
And, speaking of,
it still amazes me
how the workplace
gives us mandatory training
or how school is a mandatory thing
yet –
I get that we have to know how
to add and subtract,
but with all the years
we spend in classrooms
and throughout all the hours
when we are forced to go to school
to learn about reading, writing,
and arithmetic
no one ever teaches us
the most important lesson
which is –
how to be happy.
I say this a lot,
by the way,
and I say this because
this should be the easiest lesson to learn
but, I have to question
is it?
Is being happy the easiest lesson?
Or does it take failures
and falls
and hardships for us to learn
to never walk that way again?
It can seem that being happy
or being true to ourselves
might be the hardest job of all.
He who dies with the most toys wins,
right?
Isn’t that the saying?
I know people who have a lot of toys
but they live alone
and they have no love to share,
or they live well
but just loveless, or absent of true love
and for what?
Why?
So, to me . . .
I suppose I have to ask
what’s the sense
in having all of those toys
yet,
you have no one to play with?
The world could go to the dogs,
and I swear it
and I could have nothing
but at the same time,
I would always have everything I need
as long as I had you
because as I see it
Fuck the world
We can make our own toys —
132)
Sometimes,
it’s fine to color outside the lines
or, to break a rule or two.
At the same time
sometimes, it’s just no fun
without a partner in crime.
I mean, think about it
think about what I am about to say —
You are probably far more worldly
than I am,
and you have probably seen more places
and been to more parts of the world.
I am sure you have seen better beaches
than I have,
and I am sure
that you have witnessed better sunsets
or seen places in Europe,
or Italy, and you have been to places
that I have thought of
or dreamed about,
and you have been around the world,
especially in comparison to me.
I have not seen much,
nor is this a bad thing, to some degree
because I have seen what I’ve seen,
and I am fine to be me.
However,
with all you’ve seen
and with all the stamps you have
on your passport—
Who have you had the chance
to share this with?
What’s it like to be alone
in a crowd?
Or wait,
on second thought,
I have lived most of my life
this way,
sitting at the wrong table
or finding myself at the wrong
water cooler at work,
and it took me decades
to stand up and walk away,
so in fairness to the question;
I understand what it’s like
to live an unrewarding life,
which is why I had to get away
from certain people, places, and things
that never
cared about my happiness
but saw me as a position
in their life,
which is fine for them
but for me,
I just want more.
So, yes.
to get me
I had to go for more
even if it meant walking away
from everything
to have nothing. . .
Is it lonely?
Was it hard?
Was it painful?
Or, here’s another honest question –
Was it painful to walk away
and realize
that my absence
was hardly noticed
and later,
I found that my absence was preferred . . .
Sure
this hurt me
and yes, this is hard
for anyone.
But I can say
that no matter where I go now
or who I give my life to.
which is going to be you . . .
I will never feel alone
in a crowd
or sit with the wrong company again.
I still like the idea of Fiji.
Or, at minimum,
I’d like to see the island called
Espiritu Santo
which is the Island of The Holy Spirit.
I think I need to straighten up
and to fly right
or, at minimum,
let me go and scout out
a place that we can share together
so that when we finally make the jump
to be “Together”
or the jump to light speed,
as I like to say,
when we make a go of it
as in “all the way,”
we can go somewhere, and just say
“ahhhh.”
This is what our life is supposed to be.
You dig?
The Written Addiction 