LINK TO SPOKEN WORD MUSICAL IMPROV OF THIS POEM: ME ON VOCALS AND HARMONICA
https://soundcloud.com/user-280523083/to-need-what-is-next-2-4-19
To need what is next
Is to shun what is near —
It's our quest for best buzz
And it's rooted in fear.
So to sing song of now,
Disrobe former brands
Tremble naked, humble —
As fresh detail shows.
To embrace what is now
without judgement
Is to leap. Bravely:
Careen — limbs flailing — into clarity.
When did blue skies
Become so strange
I stopped wanting to look up
And chose to look at ground.
Was it the leading roles?
Perhaps the sneaky cameos...
Or should I just man up
And accept it was me.
Because all my heroes
Were outlaws and underdogs
Whose freedom I envied
From my corset of school uniform?
Because that bourgeois boyhood
Craved mad, mental mud,
Straight from the streets,
Not private school boredom.
Or best I peruse
This uncluttered dawn
Without heart forlorn
For tarnished shields thinner than my skin.
Thank their once polished sheen;
Sacred loyalty
In their defense
Of lands I never won.
And admit that if they
Are untilled, possess
No fertile soil From which you might draw.
That then your duty be
To free from the "me"
To give to the "them"
That they too might grow their seed.
Their abstractions, they grow
into full-formed grace
Of skyward statements
And empires of dreams —
So need what is near
Leave the sky to unfold
And shun what is next
In hope of better nows.
