I am not who I was
then again,
none of us are
who we were,
I mean.

It’s hard to think about it . . .
. . . what’s it been now,
33 years?

The world moves.
I know it. You know it.
Everyone knows the world is always turning
and everyone knows that
everything changes,
or that life happens,
as in, all the time.
Every day . . .

Ah, Chaos,

I wonder who I would be,
if I were like the Buddha,
as in all-seeing and all-knowing,
or ever-growing and consciously improving,
as in consistently, on an ongoing basis,
as in forever,
always evolving, ever-changing
as in adjusting or adapting
in a moldable form
like an unfolding story
with a peaceful plot that projects
the pure divinity of beautiful aspirations
and essentially, this is what regains
my ever-evolving perspective
towards the possibility of infinite hope.

The dreams come to me sometimes,
when times are either tough
or in a sense of disarray, and still,
the dreams are always the same
and all of them so different, but each time,
I find myself back in my old world,
like, back when I was young,
or like, as in back before there was a “before,”
or even before then, like, say,
back when I was young enough to explore or pretend,
or to walk in an empty field,
which was a vacant lot across from my home,
or also known
as the playground of my youth—the suburban world,
my town, my little spot,
my house and home and my room,
which was the one upstairs, as in up the stairs
and to the left.

And then comes the question
which is often based on the theories
of our inaccurate math.

What comes next?
What comes after the concept
of a life that was unexpected?

What do we do?
Or say?
Better yet,
what now?

Daybreak—

I want to make a change. Or better yet,
I have to make one
as fast as I can,
but sometimes,
you can change direction
or switch gears
as fast as you’d like.

There was a movie from my youth
where a young man with an ailment
had a plan to ride through Europe on a motorcycle.

Who knows?
Maybe this was a way to give himself
something to look forward to, or otherwise,
maybe this was his way of giving himself
something to live for.

I have spent years on the clock
and decades working with men
who lived hard lives and
who understood hard times.
I have been the young one
and now,
I am not so young
anymore.

Of course, I want more.
I want to be more too,
as in more than I am now
or more,
as in more aware yet,
the more I am aware,
I want to be more comfortable
with what I know as well as be fine
with what I do not
or cannot understand
because, of course,
what is a man who knows?

I have come a long way “since then,”
but then again, we all have,
even if we haven’t
because life still moves,
even if we are stagnant or still,
the world keeps turning around, like . . .
on a regular basis
for free.