And, I begin where I am . . .
I’m standing here at the face of a new day,
waiting for the sun to prevail
and looking to make a move or two,
just to keep my hopes alive.

I am north of where I was yet
there’s a piece of me, southbound,
where the waters are pure and emerald bays
are prevalent in the landscapes around me.

And hope, you say?
Sure, I have hope.

1)

The horse moved through flesh that evening,
and another soul
forfeited its right to the kingdom the next morning,
just to feel a bit closer to heaven

Understand?

Before next, it was sunrise and in the absence of presence,
there would be no recollection of anything so perfect,
other than a nod, of course,
which tripped the lines of fascination
and taught the mind to descend
into slow moving pools
of absolute bliss

I remember what I thought when I got into this ride.
I know when this trip began and I know where I was
when I agreed to these terms.
I remember the promise I made to myself
which was more than just to keep myself accountable.

When I began, I decided that if I was going to write
then I would only write a certain way.
This was not for the crowd or to bring me to the reader
but instead, I decided that if I was going to start this trip
then there could only be one way for me to travel.

I want to be crazy. Yes, absolutely crazy
I want to be perfectly crazy
like we used to be,
way back in the day
before life took its turn
and age took away the chaos.

I want to be like we were
back when adrenaline and rebellion
would pulse through our veins
and back when our first and major function
was to be wilder than we were
the night before.

There is no then, only now.
Now that we find ourselves in the fold of something new
or now that we see
something developing right before our eyes,
we look back and wonder about what our life would be like
if only we paid attention.

I say this while looking at the sky
which is changing now from the night time to daylight
and as the stages of color come into light,
I think of the sun on the horizon
bubbling like a yolk in the palm of heaven.
I think to myself
Ah, this must be it –

The Moment . . .
. . . and it’s nice!

Whether I am right or wrong is truly of no consequence.
Besides, life is more than we think and half of the time, in fairness,
nobody knows about who was right or wrong.
In fact, in most cases, all we are is varies of opinion

Then again, we’ll all find out the truth at some point
and then we can lay our crazy little arguments to rest.
Hopefully, at some point, we can all move on to the next chapter of our existence.

This book of prose has been my way of setting the clocks back,
just so I can catch up with myself by returning to the basic aspect
of why I started this journey.
I am looking for something. I am searching for something
which is right here and with me now yet there is something
absent about this. Or should I say there is something absent about me
and, therefore, in my efforts to create a source of introspectiveness,
I have built this little shed of mine, which is a place of safety,
to address the elephants in the room.

Knowing

If we didn’t know or if we didn’t have the capacity to understand or the ability to see, deeply, or at least deeper than the surface levels, and if we were blind in the sense that we couldn’t see the world around us or know about the weight from the different calamities or chaos, or if we truly lacked the gene to know or feel then, at best, we would be unaware or unfeeling; and more, we would be unmoved by ourselves and unattached to our levels of self-importance.

Perhaps I am the same age now as my teachers were when I was a child.
I was young and precocious. And them, they were older and less hopeful, tired,
less than patient and more than anxious to get out of a life
that they never seemed to bargain for.

Perhaps I understand more about the intolerableness of a life or a life unfulfilled,
or unenthusing, uninspired, like a constant reminder that a choice was made out of haste
or that, at one point, a decision to reach a settlement instead of satisfaction took place
and years went by where we outgrew our surroundings
so our wings could never spread –
Perhaps, I have grown to recognize this
or understand this now that youth is now what it used to be.

I

What I am about to share with you is in some ways career suicide because
while I supposedly work in an updated world of diversity, equity and yes,
inclusive ideas that are supposed to help bring people together
instead of marginalize or separate us as different – the truth is,
I have my feet in different worlds.

I wear different uniforms for different tasks.
Depending upon the hour, I wear a blue collar and a white
yet there is other work that I do, like this for example,
which is neither determined by the color of my collar or defined
by education or degrees on the wall.