Lost Youth

“It is difficult to get the news from poems

 yet men die miserably every day

 for lack of what is found there,”

                                   ~William Carlos Williams

With every failure the will can fade.

I’m revealed through the things I've made.

Without an art, as a matter of fact,

the ego's left to take up the slack.

 

If great fiction is a lie

that teaches us truth,

then, who wouldn’t long again

for the imaginings of youth?

 

Because the eye is never

fooled by what is smart,

we might have arrived less

brazenly from the start.

 

Why not make your life an opus,

even a tragic 3 act play,

for the very same ingredients

make for a first rate flambé.

 

Dare to have an appetite

for far more greater things,

a vocabulary learnt by heart

is how we bear our stings.

 

You can’t woo a trick

with a poem no matter

how you try, you’ll only feel older

while not entirely certain why.

 

Every dawn’s a perfect blank

I feel a need to fill it in,

as encroaching light gradually reveals

the cages we find ourselves in.

 

Imagine you are dying

in hopes of keeping death close.

Being in and not of life

is how I’ve reaped the most.

 

Feelings are always heightened

by the prospect of their loss.

So, expect to cry your eyes out

as you reckon with the costs.

 

Why do we feel the need

to try and be ourselves?

When isn’t our very being

proof of substantial health?

 

The weeks go by like days,

yet another chorus refrain,

as tides encourage the moon

to continue to wax and wane.

 

Our lives can go by unnoticed

hidden inside our mouths

forming the same words,

issuing the same doubts.

 

A cat meets your eyes

with its all-absorbing gaze.

I’m just as alive as you are

behind this enigmatic face.

 

If we all pay for our joys

then joy comes round again

as we brace for its opposite

while others lose their Zen.

 

For those content to chat,

eat, drink and be merry,

I envy your lackadaisical view

as I’ve never been one to tarry.

 

The need to recount my life

has left me in a narrative shamble,

it leads to walking around a ruin

with a mind that tends to ramble.

 

Some die of unnatural thirst

beside a running spicket,

longing for a sprawling forest

as they clutch a sticky wicket.

 

Then one day a young stranger arrives

having gotten off on the wrong floor,

and just as I was lamenting my lost youth,

lost youth came round my door.

 

“Are you looking for me?” I asked

as he stood perplexed as myself.

“I must have the wrong apartment” he said,

as we considered the cards fate had dealt.

 

At that moment my imagination kicked in

and I watched as he put down his pack.

“I’ve come from the future to find you,” he said,

“I’m here to bring you back.”

 

I looked into his eyes and knew at once

this youth was my younger self

and wondered what he’d want with me

too old and in less than good health.

 

“I want you to tell me all you know,”

he confessed having just arrived.

“I don’t want to live and I need you

to give me a reason I should stay alive.”

 

I looked in his eyes so clear and bright

and hesitated on what to say,

then putting my thoughts aside, I spoke:

“Together we can find our way.”

 

 

10/01/22