Sounds Familiar

We emerged from youth all wide-eyed like the rest

Shedding skin faster than skin can grow

And armed with hammers, feathers, blunt knives

Words to meet and to define and to... but you must know

The same games that we played in dirt, in dusty school yards

Have found a higher pitch and broader scale

Than we feared possible, someone must be picked last

And one must bruise and one must fail

And that still twitching bird was so deceived by a window

So we eulogized fondly, we dug deep, and threw

Its elegant plumage and frantic black eyes in a hole

And then rushed out to kill something new

So we could bury that too

The first chapters of lives almost made us give up altogether

Pushed towards tired forms of self immolation

That seemed so original. I must, we must never stop

Watching the sky with our hands in our pockets

Stop peering in windows when we know doors are shut

Stop yelling small stories and bad jokes and sorrows

And my voice will scratch to yell many more, but

Before I spill the things I mean to hide away

Or gouge my eyes with platitudes of sentiment

I'll drown the urge for permanence and certainty

Crouch down and scrawl my name with yours in wet cement