Poetry Monday

For a change, I thought I'd post this poem. I wrote it a long while ago, but still like it, though I don't think I'm usually this disgruntled:

What 25 says to 20

Understand that to give, you get,
To get, you give.
Understand that giving is human,
And waiting makes you stronger.
Beautiful things are forged from patience.
The slow drip of water becomes the icicle reaching to the ground,
The stalactite in the hidden cave.
Nothing gold can stay... is this the truth?
Do I try to capture a golden hour in a lost youth,
Or accept that past is past?

So he asked, "How can you tell that I'm twenty?"
Well-

Twenty blames others for mistakes, for imagined slights,
And does not see the valiant struggle that led to those transgressions.
Truly, we know not what we do.
Twenty wants to be Gandhi.
But only for the colorful robe, and all the rice one can nobly pass up.
Twenty is the humanitarian who does not see that it is worth much more to sit with a present drunk over his coffee cup,
Than all the tea that one could ship to China.
In these times, a hunger strike will not change the world -
Only its opinion of you.
Twenty wants to be Jack Black, Hunter Thompson, and Gandhi all at the same time.
Twenty says he reads biographies.
He wants to follow in the footsteps of great men.

To read another's life is to study the whole world in a single being, or to miss that universe in drawing a map for your own ambition.
Twenty is ambitious. He has dreams.

When oil and automobile emissions melt the last of the polar ice caps,
When seas rise to cover the Hollywood sign,
Humanity will be nothing but an epitaph,
And no one will care
That you were once compared to Ernest Hemingway
Or that your stepfather called you a fucking fag.

What matters is here, is now,
Is the last of the light shining in through the picture window as we sit watching films,
The warmth of your hand on mine.
It is the sweet taste of the cookies we made in the kitchen.
You insisted on snickerdoodles.

Cookies matter. Conversation matters. The warm smoke of a cigarette trailing rings to heaven like an altar candle.
Life matters here
And now.
Please treat it with gentleness.