To the Man
Who forewarned us
Almost two years ago
On a shared table
At a little kickback place we love
In the mouth of the canyons
We grew to know
As we were about to journey
To a tropical land
Fancied by oranges,
Powder sugared beaches
And rain falling skies…
“Sale your things,” he counseled.
“All of it,” he cautioned further.
“As it can all be replaced,” he claimed.
And we thought
And we laughed
While we readjusted in our seats
For a moment the proposition
Played wise and all-knowing
But then somewhere
In this materialistic life
We lost
The truth which spoke from this man’s lips
Truth cannot change ignorance
Ignorant we were
To the man’s claims
And so we spent our bones
Our tears, our sweat
Upon the backs of others
Who came near to assist our madness
We moved across the roaming land
Draining all the resources we had
To dock abreast in the Sunshine State
With twenty-six feet worth
Of bits and pieces towed in its place
The truck
The car
The books
The clothes
The dishes
The lamps
The sofas
The blankets
And robes
The knicks
The knacks
Collecting dust
From this person
And that
The weights
The Pony
And Dexter who
We never use
Yet here they are
Just in case…
Because I believed
Transporting life
Through things is possible
Nay needed
I felt I needed these objects
To make a home
Yet in two years time
I have come to find
The only things to make
A home is the heart and the mind
BOOM
Hindsight hits you from behind
It hurts like hell
And you wish you could tell
Your former self,
Rather YELL,
“Listen to the man,
He knows the way…
Listen to life when it calls
So you don’t regret one day.”
After all fate serves its signs
You can’t take the dolphin statue
With you when you die
Fuck I should have listened
To the Man