Unseizing the Day

Someday you will die.  But not today.

Today you will live, and worry over trifles,

And aggravate the people you love most,

And stoke your vanity, and nurse a grudge,

And waste an hour staring at a screen.

This is what it means to be alive –

To always be failing to cherish what you have.

To always be distracted, busy, blind,

And always fumbling in pursuit of dust,

While treasure gleams behind you, patiently,

Praying you’ll madly dare to turn around.

It’s too much pressure to imagine death.

It’s too much to live up to.  Let it go.

Assume instead that you will never die,

And never read a poem that begins

By bluntly telling you your death will come,

Because, however much the poet means

To celebrate the inconsequence of life,

He’ll only do the opposite.  He’ll seem

To say that you should seize the day,

When all he really meant to say was that

The day can seize itself, if necessary,

And you can dream away your short long life,

Because you’re human, and that’s what we do.

Experiment

If you were to let go of your most cherished beliefs – just for a moment – what do you think you would suddenly see?

Epiphany

“I have it!” they scream,

Bursting from dark laboratories,

Clutching a sheaf of arcane scribbles

Or a half-exploded beaker,

Eyes alight with a fervid passion

That frankly makes me nervous,

And crowing that they’ve found the secret

To great sex, endless love,

Spiritual fulfillment, and retirement savings.

They look so proud of their hard-won discovery –

So eager to share it with an adoring world –

So self-impressed and fierce in their belief –

That I’m not certain I have the heart to tell them

How I was never looking for the formula.

I was never in the market for secondhand bliss.

I was only ever looking for something improbable –

So fortuitous, in fact, as to seem ridiculous –

And utterly unrepeatable –

And of course, like everything we know of,

Working hard at vanishing.

Wisdom

If you're not part of the fun, you're part of the bummer.

Networking

 

"Networking" is such an ugly word. I prefer the term "forming superficial social connections to later exploit for economic gain."

Old Soul

I know I'm an old soul because my soul is constantly complaining about the temperature and reminiscing about how cheap everything used to be.

Onward

Time has a way of kneading out the knots,

Untangling the string, tracing the true path,

Unveiling to the hindsight what the foresight failed,

In all its lancet-eyed vaingloriousness, to see.

Time, the great killer, is a healer too –

Mellowing pain, and letting wisdom grow

In the dark earth made fertile by bleak fire.

Time does not love us, but we grow in time,

Gaining in strength, in wounds, in memory,

In scars of hate, God willing in love too.

Is there a better way?  Not that we know.

We clutch and climb; we tumble backward, fall;

We rise and climb again, with weary strength,

Not knowing what awaits us on the way,

Or what new vistas glimmer from the peak,

But sure that up is up, and falling’s fine,

And even makes a better story when

We reach the top and meet whoever’s there.

Is all this comfort?  Let’s not hope to say.

But if you pass me on the straggling climb,

And meet my eyes with yours, and speak no word,

I’ll hear, in some far-buried cave in me,

A soundless whisper preach tenacity.