outrun : ancestral debris

sometimes my words out run my feelings

when my head is reeling

from trying so hard to stay afloat

but then there is a time

for drowning

even if

as I do

the image of the paramedics looming over me

appears

as I watch my teenage self

struggling for life and air

Oh Steve

if only you knew

how my heart beat for you

those short weeks before

but I pulled away

and then I crashed

and so all of our hopes

of true young love were dashed

there is so much I never got to live

I was a person drowning

or struggling to stay afloat in

torrential seas

all around me so much going on

and now at times I feel

my true self

like a growing bird

restless for flight

and yet how do I learn to keep my feet

planted firmly on the ground

When sometimes all of this human suffering

seems to surround me

and overwhelm me

can I trust

the true feelings to burst on through

and if I do

in time will I emerge

from out of this cocoon

in new place

my heart open

as I learn to embrace

the soldier that came

as the past lay dying in ashes around me

for I want so so badly to live

so so badly to be

the me that I feel and know and see

deeply lost and buried somewhere

under this massive pile

of ancestral debris