The Life of a Nomad: Experience the Unexpected

Glowing, energized by life you seem to bounce
From room to room. Reveling in each moment, flirting
With danger you seek to saturate yourself with experiences.
Blindly leaping off a cliff. Happy to embrace
The unknown, leaving the dull tedious safty behind.

DESTRUCTIVE

Giggling, hiding behind a desperate facade,
1 part humor. 2 parts cockiness. 2 parts fear.
Facade in tow, you try to become who culture, society
Says you should be. Armed with a short skirt and matching attitude
You set out to find yourself, looking for beauty and self respect;
You find nothing but emptiness. A barren wasteland of empty promises,
Bitterly disappointing. Lacking understanding you plunge
Forward, loosing yourself.

What you miss, what you fail to grasp is apparent to all who know you.
You are beautiful, intelligent beyond your knowledge. You are who you have
Tried to become. Worth. Self worth comes from within.
You are important and yes, you mater to more people than simply
Your mom. First though, and don’t miss this, you need to love
Yourself. Accept your flaws, your beauty. Surround yourself with deep
Friends. Those who see your facade, and past it.

Embrace your uniqueness, immersing yourself in the pool of self reflection.
Rising, wet and dripping with self comprehension. Once again born
Free to walk from moment, to moment. Confident in knowing
You lack some answers. Satisfied with your imperfections. Content
With your failures. Present. Future. Conforming not to cultural
Expectations. Insist that a misguided, destructive culture conform instead,
To you.

Click above to hear an audio version of the poem.

©j.alan 2007

The ability to dream, to imagine a world, a life
Different from the current existence. The day to day
Normalcy that fills the waking hours, leaving
A man hollowed. Filled to the brim with emptiness.

Dreams can be large, life altering creatures clamoring
For attention. Consuming energy and time in a tunnel vision
Driven marathon, leaving a man exhausted, gasping for
Breath. Stumbling as if caught suddenly in a cold winter rain.
Laughing.

Dream can be small, joy filled ideas easily ignored.
Easily entertained. Filling the mind with inspiration
Like thousands of small puzzle pieces connecting.
Interlocking. Creating an every shifting image of what could be.

Dreams speak to us of possibilities, depicting
Airbrushed pictures of perfection. Promising much.
Guarantying nothing. A dream, whispered softly to the stars becomes
A folly in the day light. A pile of broken glass sparkling
in the long winter of shattered idealism.

The death of a dream does not begin the death of a man.
A man begins to die when his desire, the desire to dream
Expires.

But. Hatched slowly, incubated by time and pressure
A dream is born. Like a wobbly, newly birthed fawn
It takes on its own life, its own existence. Fully formed,
The dream metamorphosizes creating a new reality
From the shattered glass of the old.

After all, dreams are delicate and fickle.
A soft hint of a whisper on a cold fall breeze. Easily
scared off. Easily dissipated.

Dreams. Delicate dreams flitter through the air
flirting, teasing with our humanity. Fragile.
A dream within a dream.

Click above to hear an audio version of the poem.

©j.alan 2007

A writing lesson on revision turns into a fieldtrip.
400 students lining the shoulder of a busy country road,
standing like so many bowling pins. Curious. Chatty.
Teachers pace up, then down the line.
“Step back from the road”
Faintly echos from the mouths of weary, worried, adults.

Laughing chatter dissipates. The purple flashing light
rolls slowly past. Orange flagged cars and trucks move by.
One. Then the next. And the next. A solitary procession
honoring in death what it failed to in life.

The mourners, sad weathered faces. Serious, twisted with
grief, despair. Staring straight ahead, staring at us. Staring past us.
Their sadness reaches out, cresting over the line.
A wave of raw feeling calls from each face, each car.
Every face different. Every face the same. They begin to blur,
each fading slowly into the next. Each face, each flag
a harsh reminder of the war we want to forget. The war,
the one we keep at a distance. The one we politicize
and argue about over cups of cold coffee in safe harbors.
Ignorant of its realities; until now.

Each passing car screams out, forcing us to put a face, a real face
on the cost of war. Each face, a silent reminder of what is lost,
and gained. Each car pleads with me, reminding me of
a young swimmer I knew. A man. 18 years old, several years back.
A man. John. Dead in the desert. Dead in Iraq.

Click above to hear an audio version of the poem.

©j.alan 2007

For two hours I sit in group therapy,
observing. Feeling the tension, the exhaustion
stifling the room. In a circle I study
the faces of my fellow interns.

…..Frustrated…….Poor…
….Bitter….Distracted….
Trapped…….Tired…………Confused…..
………..Lost………Angry……..
…Hopeless……………Unhappy…….
..Insecure…..Bored……..Absent…..

Each face shines with a story, untold.
The death of idealism. Hope fades
as the questions mount. Teaching
is about questions. Some questions though cannot be answered,
and some answer are buried within.

Am I a good teacher? Do I care enough? Will I find a job?
Can I do this long term? Do I want to? Deep question not answered
flippantly. The voice drones on.
The circle remains unchanged.
physically present interns, mentally
absent.

Click above to hear an audio version of the poem.

©j.alan 2007