new poem.

Sometimes I lie awake at night
Seeing dreams in 3D playing on the stucco ceiling above me
See when you spend your days running around in a craze like some dazed up, glazed over mice in a maze,
You tend to find time only slows down enough for you to catch a breath
when you’re sleeping.
So instead of sleeping, I lie awake.
Cause it’s the only chance I ever get to think

Life moves pretty fast, fact, and furiously, too
Fairytales shown to us when we were kids of slow-down Sunday evening strolls and sit down dinners with the folks are simply fiction
Truth is, we’ve given into the addiction, eyeballs twitching, schedule-switching, pitching last-ditch missions
to cure the itching to get rich
in coin or in culture

But too often we forget that it’s time, not money, that heals all wounds
This human race that we run is far too often mistaken as a sprint,
and not a marathon
instead, every being bursting forward straining for the invisible finish line
grasping for straw wreaths to hide our baldheads

Babylon

But what we fail to admit is that the human race is also a relay
and lately the baton’s not being passed around nearly enoughWhile you high-step your way down the sidewalk from business meeting to lecture seating, from hurried greeting to TV dinner eating

you missed the man crouched halfway over on the sidewalk, hat in hand, asking for a little less money and a little more change

you missed the three-pieced suited Wall Street kings, helplessly staring hopeless at their life stories stitched out in numbers on the New York Stock Exchange

you missed the quiet classmate who sits next to you in math class, practicing boyscout knots on necktie nooses in preparation for what’s to come

and you missed the young girl, so starved for affection that she sits, carving rejection into her arm like an amateur tattoo artist

you missed the boy, who faces up to his father’s fists with all the fearlessness of a fighter pilot, who realizes that his father’s need to be violent stems from a father who was always too silent

you missed the mother, carefully packing white-bread and love sandwiches for her kids cause that’s all she can afford

you missed the grandfather, rocked with Alzheimers yet still clutching his playing cards so he can remember what it feels like to hold a hand

and the ex-con, released from prison into a world waiting to beat him back into submission

you missed the war vet, returning home from Iraq to find his baby girl’s now grown up into a 13-year-old drama queen
The type of girl who loves to be mean to 13-year-old Mary Jean
Who might be a little underdeveloped and a little overweight
Who might be scared to relate because she’s never had a real friend outside of facebook and blind dates
See, Daddy never had time to see her
Working hard chasing that American dream
that never quite seemed to turn out as advertised
open your eyes
see your family and friends waving at you in the rearview mirror
Being left behind because you couldn’t take a moment to just (inhale)

breathe for a second

This life is not meant for chasers, faces and names getting caught up in places and games, no.
This life is meant for everyday everybodies who find life unashamed in something as simple as stopping to smell the sweet scent of rain on a sultry summer’s day

Find solace in stillness
Peace in the quiet

Forget your deadlines
and landmine achievements
Instead, grab a loved one,
pack a lunch
and go eat it on the banks of the mainstream
Because sometimes
It’s ok,
to just be.