sad but rad

I’ve seen men like you.

I’ve seen men like you who meditate on life’s wonders

Only to be buried within its tar-filled sockets.

Your back is bent with swollen questions,

That fester in the heat of each days promise.

The elders say we must be careful of men like you,

“Because their hunger never sits easy”.

They say we should watch the way you move and speak,

They say you wait on taught hind muscles plotting deeds,

Poised within shadows.

But I think I’ve met you once, in the moments of your plotting.

I saw the gleam swimming in your pupils,

I saw the passion solid in your expression.

I asked you to come out of the dark and you seemed to soften.

That night we spoke in tongues of color and beauty and wonder.

We were young but aged enough to know the elders lied to us.

They wept of stories of frozen hope,

Of dim days that forgot their purpose.

But in those moments of flavored language we found a shard of gold.

It sat amongst piles of glimmering diamonds.

In that moment we learned what those men had forgotten.

Something lost between the roads of love and hunger.