the easy part

Here's what you said to me: "Take it from someone who's made it, kid - gettin' here's the easy part." Out of all the words spoken during that afternoon, I remember those thirteen most clearly. I knew what you meant, then, and I still know, now, but to this day I've had troubling finding a way to use that bit of - what was it? Advice? More wisdom than advice, I suppose. And more insight than wisdom. Insight - ha! Lot of good it's done me these past, what, four years?

God, time flies. Even then you called me kid. Imagine, me, a then twenty-five year old man being called kid. It wasn't condescension, but it wasn't affection, either. What was it - a distant familiarity? Kid - a word used by the old. A word ground sharp by envy. Envy - that's what it was. Your voice rang of it. It was on your breath, bitter and heavy. It dripped from your widening pores, and ran streaming down your wrinkling skin.

Youth - it surrounds, smothers, and chokes you. The endless chatter of young mouths preaching new trends, new ideas, and new worlds - the tintinnabulation of a thousand bells ringing in your ears, all discord and cacophony. Living their lives faster than ever, movin' on up. But to where? Adulthood. Maturity. Oldness. Staleness. "Gettin' here's the easy part" - it wasn't insight so much as it was a threat.


Park

An old man
taps his cane,
biding time.

A little girl
squeals!
galloping by.

Time plays
its game,
moving quicker
for one than
the other-

eternal
and fleeting
in the park.