Twenty-Six

Twenty-six came fast... Possibilities close in by the hundreds, as if they were marching to the sound of a choke-hold. Pressure's a good thing when it has us make something beautiful, or something hot. Stardom, creation, art, invention, love, whatever... Those are something. But twenty-six years don't guarantee illumination- that a step forward won't be going back where the space is too expansive for comfort. Why does the emptiness scream so loud? Maybe I'll run off to Boston or Brooklyn, or somewhere in Florida where the noise is real, where the sun can make me forget. I hear Santa Fe's nice and full of hippies like me. But there they are again- options. Was I tricked? Twenty-six... and mother society (that *****) says I should stop screwing around. Try stability like other healthy-functioners. But they look bored. I'll be damned before I'm one of them. See, I'm a should-must-hater to the core. But I get it... I can only say 'screw that' so many times, til I've screwed just about every should in the book, an obligatory ****. And I know that somewhere in time, poignant obligations could become wanted. Transformation happens to us all- no tricks. But twenty-six still haunts... narrowing halls, nightmares, bad dreams... wedding bells and crying babies and sweat-soaked sheets. Enough! I need a drink, drink too much, back to square one... But before you guess, or relate in ways that make your world seem smaller and less heavy- Before you judge me too far gone, or too unsafe for pleasure, Let's at least acknowledge together That I have one thing (make me feel better) Time the wish-granter is still big at twenty-six. It's the lesson-learner, the justification of risk, and the stupidity of youth. (And if time's not linear as once they said, I wonder will I always BE somewhere? Lost in some traveling wavelength?) Time is a mind-boggler too. I'm twenty-six... but at fifty-two I may not have all the answers I want. But I can relax about that, that's what time can do. Twenty-six.. all that's left for me now is a thousand different ways to enjoy the movement, to take a moment and watch it spin into constant re-arranging moods through the interaction... Like a falling deck of cards echoed into an oblivion of my very own.