I’m grateful to Nine Cloud Journal for publishing my work (you can read it by purchasing the issue at Amazon — a great way to support independent literary journals!)
The poem appears below.
We Were Too Young to be That Old
Never mind drinking and driving. How about just drinking?
Or driving, for that matter. Sixteen? Even eighteen seems
too soon for such awesome responsibility: the life you save
may, after all, be your own. But if not sixteen or eighteen,
then when? Old enough to fight in a war, some say. Well, let’s
outlaw those, too, and change a few other things while we are
at it. Free art for everyone, but wait, how will creatives get paid?
See, I’ve boxed myself into a corner, already, and I’ve just gotten
started. That’s the problem with wanting to change Wrongs into
Rights, with being right, period. It’s not that we can’t improve
ourselves, editing our ills; it’s that we seem congenitally impelled
to push things the wrong way, on principle. Trial & Error, Cause
& Effect, experience teaching us to be better—or worse, depending
on the breaks. And those that die trying (or fail dying) are fodder
for the collective wisdom we accrue. So, each time we get behind
the wheel or belly up to the bar or get shipped overseas to kill
people we don’t know (because it’s all part of a grander plan),
we prove this is not necessarily a matter of age or even timing—
it’s us, ourselves, and what we’ve built ourselves into being: if you
are fortunate to attain a certain age or status, you get busy making
or else defying the rules, b/c even if they apply to everyone, not all
of us are dealt with in equal measure by a world that’s old enough
to know better but still turns, because what else is it going to do?
