Define Me

You attempt to define me,
as the sands attempt to define the sea.
Do the sands have no purpose without the sea?

You yearn to understand me
but it is for you that you do this,
not for me.

You label me for your use and
stash me on a high, dusty shelf,
convenient.

You analyze me, always, but
no better do you understand yourself in the end
and I wonder why, then, you do it.

For I cannot sit on your shelf.
The sea will go where it will
without ever asking the sands.

for Alex

Here among us,
unrivaled by gods and kings,
lies a beauty of purpose
so simple in style
that it lives virtually unknown to man,

hidden behind your pillars of stone,
under the pages of your scripture,
lost in the storm of your
manufactured conflicts,
begging to be known.

You Are the Strong Ones

You are the strong ones,
you, who refuse to sit idly by,
who refuse to learn without questioning
fact and teacher alike,
who refuse blind faith
and prescribed worship,
and yet are at peace with the fact
that some things
are not to be understood.

You are the strong ones,
you, who see beauty everywhere,
not because of words in a poem or a book
but because it is simply there
in the faces,
in the flowers,
in the love, and
in the suffering.

You are the burdened,
you, who see the sorrow
of the world
and feel it fully,
toll paid to be counted among
the truly alive.

In the end
your views will die with you,
your perspective irrelevant,
your spirit a hazy concept,
nothing with you
but the sum of your nows.

And if, in this end, you are fortunate,
you will have spent your time
among the also-alive,
among the also-engaged,
among the also-aware,
through joy and through pain,
knowing that you have consumed
all that there is.