Ephemeral Echoes

There you are—fellow human,

Maybe alone, lost, and confused or—

Happy, resolute, and found through truth.

Whatever you are—

Remember: you can set out to be whatever want,

Do not abandon, decry, or tease—

You can be whatever you want to be,

Just make sure to follow your dreams and those of yours alone.

Stand strong, stand proud and don’t turn around.

Choose your battles, collect your wars and have your own back.

For our world can be dangerous yet.

Hold your head up above the clouds and keep your capped-heart sleeved,

Protect your grace and mar your claws from paper thorns and keyboard strokes.

For we are beauty, and grace and all that abound.

Men and Women who call these hallowed halls of Earth home.

Ascend to the slopes and top that mound.

Soar, Drop, Peak, Crowd.

Pervade the space, charge the energy, make them your own.

Clutch the enemy horn.

Grasp, evade, hold. Never fold.

Be glossy blue, frosty purple, hazy mauve, forest green and ghastly true.

Whatever you see and no matter what you do, be bold.

Be brave, be deep, be profound.

Leave your mark.

Have no mercy for your wake, carve boulders and push open gates contented to rest deeply amongst your waves.

Hand them hell.

Cap your walls, armor yourself. Steel those greedy eyes that pry.

Don’t lend them your ear, your heels, your weaknesses.

For we and we alone have the eyes that see and a mouth that hears.

We carry our burdens on the vertebrae of weak backs and heavy necks.

Demur, resolute, aware of all that goes on around us.

Watchful, careful, powerful.

Deep as the deepest ocean.

Far as the farthest contempt.

Take a step back, gather yourself.

Pull our sounds, loud, soft, muted and pure.

Crowded, Jammed, Trapped and Collected.

Tapped to the better channel.

Pluck up courage amongst buckled knees and upturned stomachs.

Scared that fear yearns to make us weak.

Our dawns run neglected, humbled and sweet.

Are we scared of that fear or are we not?

Why are we scared when we know fear makes us strong?

Are we troubled, bothered, unsettled?

Do we raze and graze or mettle and meddle?

We have learned, we have trusted, we have lost.

Shaped by propaganda; changed for feeble ways and spare elf dust

Tales of graves and bones and wasted worlds left to rust.

Sunken costs melted to pasts broken dreams.

Our Ancestors who left us hopeful for every penny on the dollar,

or else we get collared for our problems.

Rutter, duster, fender, blender.

Better, ledger, measure, bender.

How do we end up?

They send the beasts to poke our souls and push love to our pooled founts.

Hope upon hope that we can jumpstart our cold hearts.

But they try us not for we are stronger, and greater and braver than they ever could be.

Strength trapped, netted to the palm of our hands.

Laughter’s sweet, long embrace rewards us;

Challenges bless us and move us forward

When the frost shrouds at dusk and trouble brews heated threats that loom over each of us

Snowfall. Prey. Heralds the sky.

Swoons escape fast.

Naked delays. Joy robbed.

Grass sways.

Pull us far away.

Potent valor, forced strength and sheer doubt all that stays true.

Suppose we judge, we deem, we rely on them and these truths.

To make us better to make us pure, to make us whole.

We become them, we become a watered-down form of ourselves.

Sorted, structured, quartered.

Who are we? Who are they? Who are you?

Dreamers, Followers, Supporters, Fans, Devotees, Advocates.

Called upon, rested upon, sat upon, stood upon, pushed upon.

Bells, telephones, buzzers, murmurs, hums, drums, jolts.

Drones, clones, hones, gnomes.

Rumors, talk, news, gawks,

Museums, parks, plays, and marks.

Stare, gape, gaze, goggles, ogles, gawps.

Whatever you are, whatever you want to be

we are all here for you to succeed.

Whether you are short or tall

Whether your clouds stay eternally gray

or the sun burns rays of joy to your day.

Cry not, be not, want not.

Those of us around you may pound on the ground, the cement, the grass, the land.

We want for you to bask the cool, plump shadows of stagnant eve.

Calm allays, subdued shelters of bundled hay.

Mercury retrograde seduces the stars and embraces the moon. Where you should be. Where you should level your arrow and shoot for the heavens.

Target your plan, hedge your endeavor.

Unmoved by tears, unmoved by blankets of darker shrouds as day rolls by once more.

We are all the chosen one, the peer pressured one, the betrayed one, the smart one, the engaged one.

The one who swears, the one who undertook all other fears.

Suggested, plotted, planted and planned.

Vowed, reputable, pledged, and swore.

Are we even who we say we are or are much more?

We have freedom for an empty arena

We have fortune between the folds of a forgone wafer

New rules, no rules, good rules, broken rules.

Some truths we exhume later.

We scramble to top the strange tower adorned by

Rose colored glasses sent to betray us

From the creatures of forgotten wastelands that leave us as though we are left to war, scavenge, plunder and wander.

Lost to the person we once were.

Lost to the sands of an abandoned clock that has been carved away.

Shaved, shaped, sculpted and cut.

All we are left to have are the remnants of a dry lake bed.

Faded, dry algae, scales and rotted wood vessels.

The salt of a sea no longer churned, butter lost, maddened by a parched garden.

Left to saunter thoughtless days, bedded by the bars of an asylum.

Honesty left to dry by the stream.

As water courses over the rocky brook where creatures dwell.

Search, hunt, rummage through the trunks of velvet fate.

Unopened letters, marked words. Penned thoughts. Who are we, apart from not you?

We are a people that don’t make sense.

We dwell among homes of glass and beams of drought.

Patched domes, and heavy thoughts.

Castled under a palace of successful dreams.

Our lessons we lend for others to prosper and succeed.

Be yourself, be whomever you want to be.

Just be.