Boys don’t exactly grow to be men
But something else, some structure to learn
What was never received. It was too hot,
Too far from what was wanted. The nursery lamp
Never went off, the mobile never stopped
Revolving in play. Only the hand of fate changed
Its fickle twitching, on switches out of reach
To oversized grips.
Let’s do a retrospective, shall we?
How cleanly you fell through accountability’s ice,
Left the freedom of the mind, to focus on
What it doesn’t have, which isn’t much,
It turns out, or too much to count. It depends
On the way you embrace the bars in the crib
You never accepted. How much crying
Would you do, before being broken,
As you never were? The stick of daily living
Is a burden or crutch. You forever clutch at
Imagined pearls.
What’s it like in your head,
The endless churning, of what is wrong in this world,
To keep the secret quiet of what is wrong
In you? It's unexamined country, free from
All parties at war, where you can score
A shit-ton of swag if you stay lucky
By playing the no play, the knowing how
Every turn of the curtain on the illusion
Snaps a mousetrap, how everyone is bad, and
No one works for you.
Still, everyone always has.
It seemed effortless how you drew what you
Wanted, without even praise, how your smile
Could convey appreciation within every heart
Without you having to do a thing, or think a
Thought, except of what you wanted, such
Empires to build and destroy, and leave
In scattered bits for plastic containers
You grudgingly stowed for eternity, for some
Future value in ruins.
You’ve learned to stand tall
With nothing, the bluffer’s stone, with your insistent
Obstacles of charm deployed as the only way to learn
The truth of a world where everything out of reach
Has been withheld from you, personally.
So the blessings
Of this earth are imbued with your curse
Of seeing with jaundiced eyes, of knowing only
How people are moved, not why. You offload that too
With your capacious smile, knowing how
Everyone fills in the blank, the blank that you are
By sheer force of will. That ravenous leer
The only reveal of what’s underneath there,
What resentments bubble at being given too much
And shown too little.
What have we done, to leave you so
Untouched? As you fold into the unknown world
Of people in the relentless stream, moved along,
To leave me nothing more than they do
As your gift, when we know the physics,
Of how many ways to fall, and how hard.
