Mostly written by my brother

Everybody’s got their excuses
for why and when.
“Learn to fly and then we can talk, boy.”
Before flight comes advice,
“Move slow, take time.”
All your hang-ups, not mine

are holding me back.

If I were a smart man
I might move slow.
First you see, then you know where to be.
I’m supposed to know,

but not really to live.
Not to play, just to give
to the world.

The world hasn’t shown me shit
but my eyes were covered.
I accepted it all and never wondered
why you’d hide my eyes,
like it’s all so bad.
I was too young to see, too young to even be
alarmed by it all.

Maybe you should’ve let me look,
so I could stand tall now
and realize how I’m to make my mark.

“Advice, like youth,
probably wasted on the young…”
You forget what you’ve done
and demand me a man.
Without warning I’ll come to it
in bloodshot highway fashion
I digress in my passion. I feign maturity.

How am I to be of use
when I don’t know my heart,
can’t see the part I’m supposed to play?
This screw-all game of luck and trust,
to live you must be free of it all.
To be free you must say “no”
to what you know, else you’ll crack.
I’ll leave you and then come back
to you, a man.

How am I to be of use
to your ideals that are dying,
when my heart is screaming, crying
for the trails I have not run?
I’m as deaf to your ideals
as I am to your advice.
I’m uncertain as dice
rolls, my life.

My life to date is blank.
A space to write and fill.
A place for heart and will
to be a man?

I could just move on and pretend
and be as useless now as then,
asking “Just when will I be a man?”
A matter of hours has broken
years of thought and practice,
of life and trying to act as if
I cared about any of it.

I need to run into the night,
to practice love and sin,
fuck it up and try again
to be a man.

I can’t take your path.
When I try, you stop me.
I’m just supposed to find the spirit of a man.

The man I haven’t learned to be
mocks me, laughs and gestures,
a smile but no answer to my questions
and points at my trail.

Step aside and I’ll walk.
I’ll come back and we’ll talk
together as men.

To be a man takes practice.
You can’t smile and teach.

Your goal I can’t reach

without time and pain.

The man I haven’t learned to be
is patient, and waits for me
to do whatever it takes to come back
to you, a man.

Tentatively titled “To you, a man”