I opened my heart a little too much, I think,
digging around for something
I thought I’d lost.

I widened it too much at the edges
and you fell in
and I can’t see the bottom from up here
and now I’ve no idea,
how I’m supposed to get you out

Inevitably we will all die with unanswered questions in our heads,
folded quietly like paper notes that have sunken
to the bottom of the sea.

Take advantage of this unique opportunity,
to live the questions now.
While we have lips to speak them
While the adventure still lies
only in wait,
of our curiosity

I reach
beneath the hood of my heart
and thoughts pour out,
sandstone and lilac and auburn,
amber, coffee, crimson,
warm like buckets of paint left in the sun,
their lids off,
all different colors weaving
into streams of vivid pictures
of me and you

Have a seat in the audience tonight
beneath the black, moonless sky
our stage illuminated, only,
by the brilliance of your eyes

Have a seat in the audience tonight
and watch the acrobats
tread the tightrope
of the-thing-they-think-they-can’t-do

See the hoops of each thing you’re avoiding
be set ablaze,
flames hungry and glittering in the gloom
as the roaring lion
leaps through them

Hold your breath,
as the bearded lady decides
she is more marvelous without the smooth chin
she always wanted,
and listen,
as the crowd cheers on

Watch the world’s strongest man
sit down to share
his greatest weakness
as he lifts his grand arms to dismantle
all that haunts him
late at night,
when he’s alone

Grip the edge of your chair
as the jugglers
shuffle their daggers,
knives piercing the light around them,
each blade, a different failure,
tips glinting with defeat
and yet
not one
will make them bleed

The trapeze artist falls,
their eyes closed,
arms outstretched and trusting
they’ll find a bar to hold

The man in the canon
ignites his own fuse,
the sinking in his gut
eclipsed by his dream
of soaring through the sky.

And the drinks tonight are glowing with courage,
warm on your lips
without a drop of alcohol.
We’ve spun the cotton candy
from all your worries
mixed with air,
so you can feel them
melt to nothingness
on your tongue

Have a seat in the audience tonight,
and witness every single thing
you have ever been too afraid to do
be done,
and watch
everyone and everything
come out the other side
alive

Human beings have a complexity that makes them so beautiful and interesting to observe. The way the mind travels, almost of its own accord. How it responds to the world around it. How it builds a world within.

There are times though that we are tempted to withdraw. To admire this beauty and intricacy, and the products of it, only from a distance. Behind the glass where it cannot quite touch us. To not get mangled in the contradictions and the confusion and the madness.

But to do so is to be removed from the source. The core experience that calls art into existence and bestows upon it meaning. From the thrill that is being alive and being flawed and being moved enough by our time here in some way to feel the need to catalogue it. To share something of it with others. In connection, in memoriam of this finite thing we are all here for,
just this once.

I hear often that the people of the world
have gone soft,
but I don’t think that’s true.
I don’t think too many soft people
is a problem the world could ever have

People are hard in their hearts and in their heads,
hard the way glass is hard
and they think it makes them strong
until they realize
they’ve only made it easier for others to break them.
People are hard like bullets are hard and like knives are hard,
hard like loss is hard and like words are hard,
with hard opinions and hard perspectives,
the way that walls are hard
until someone has gone through the work
of taking them down

It’s rare, that people are soft.
Soft like things must be sometimes
to withstand an impact,
and not break.
Soft the way knowledge is soft,
the way it must be if it is to change shape,
it must be malleable.
Soft the way giving is soft
so that when we give pieces of ourselves to others
we can do so without snapping.
Soft like water is soft,
so it may bend and adapt to fill any space that needs it,
without ever losing itself,
and when it must be a force of nature,
it is that too