Taking Inventory
It’s the same reason
that every love song
begins with the name Marie,
it’s about cadence and timing
rhyming not solely for sound,
but for the way the words beat.
As if diction could be tasty,
or what the definition of privilege
might really mean.
A popcorn textured ceiling,
eyes in the wood grain
on a door that stared back at me,
a recurring childhood dream where someone
was always trying to take me away from something.
almost 35 years old and coming to know
that nightmare was about learning
that the one I should fear is me.
Is never having been told
that you couldn’t be something a blessing
when it’s your responsibility to realize
that the limits are your own making?
For example, tell me that it is easy
to have the courage to begin a thing
only to come to know that your ability
doesn’t match the ambition
that you had at the beginning.
Maturation is growing from ignorance
to the understanding that restriction
is the exact ingredient needed to strengthen a spirit.
The necessary resistance of one’s own friction;
it’s like knowing how much work actually staying motivated is,
or why all corporations use Outlook on a PC,
they can’t get through their heads
what they’ve blinded themselves to see.
A ship that big and having been
headed in a solitary direction too long
can’t simply turn quickly
when they encounter what could be
death or opportunity.
The catch-22 of numbers on a screen
and the 1’s and 0’s that represent you and me,
no matter how advanced tech could be
each and every innovation began with a dream
in which a man or woman broke through
the limits of what they thought
that they once could do.
The Amazing Race on TV,
it’s a show I’ve never seen,
but the same attribute
could be given
to different colored people
who walk by me.
I wonder when we’ll be through
with all this generalizing?
Yes, stereotypes fit, but that’s only
when we choose to wear them.
It’s not like we don’t have a choice
in today’s outfit.
A Catholic elementary school,
Fifth Grade Physical Fitness Testing,
the Sit-and-Reach,
realizing that a project might be
just beyond our abilities,
but pushing through because we knew
where quitting might lead.
My Grandmother’s place on the lake,
the one with the spiral staircase,
it takes cutting cantaloupe to know
that what we’ve been told
is only advice from a scenario already known.
Our time then,
is for a life that is yet to be lived.
This day is a chance at carpe diem.