UNDER-STANDING THE REAL WORLD

Belittled by rejection of 1 Timothy 4:12,

The maturity of my face weighs more heavily than

The size and nature of my heart,

Whether it has known scorn or joy seven times over for

I’ve barely turned past a few chapters and

Each momentary page is not that weathered.

In fact the years that I have passed are considered a

Prologue or skippable prelude to reality, the main story;

I have been told that they are not real, like an introduction

That’s fiction for a make-believe story that’s a biography,

Which is frightening because I thought I was the author of my life

When apparently I’m just among the stage direction.

It seems that being two or three years elder

Makes one two or three feet taller, since

Each page is not marked by my stylistic fingerprint,

But by the tread of a heavy footprint:

Staggered, jagged lines that I try to read

But must be too youthful to heed.

What is my purpose if it is solely to grow older,

To add age upon page until I’m recognized as legible or

Credible enough to beckon thought when

My spine will then tire of the weight of pages bent and

My memory will be lost like page 43,

And I simply become the epilogue?

I would rather live as a child and crawl

On all fours, smearing the ink ordained norms

And demean my image with insulting stains

Than learn to walk upright and commend the younger

For upholding the table of contents of the older.

I want to toss away these doctrines and stories and

Ask the greatest writers what the point of life is

If our hearts are only paper thin.

A TEAR IN THE PAGE

I dream of open hearts that are open journals
where imperfectly crafted thoughts are
thoughtfully transacted crofts that sit in lots
for different minds to excavate and till.

Yet today I find it hard when all I see are hills
that mask my clarity and birth disparity until
I am sure that I can never sleep because slumber
makes me stumble down the steep spiral binding
of this page off unto some incoherent writing.

For the words I publish are dismissed as rubbish
like barren land laden with weeds that fail to represent
the deeds of an overworked farmer or meticulous gardener.

Is this then the nature of collaboration -- desperation
for communication that transcends the self
unto the shelf amongst the univocal sound of other farmers?

It seems unsafe for me to think of such a harvest
because the ink on this paper is so heavy it sinks
past the brink of reason causing my eyes to water
the script I sought to author.

Now my journal is closed and my mind grows tired
from speaking dire words that remain unheard so 
I drift off and grow numb to these cold winds called 
winter.