How I manage
To forge relationships with others
Baffles me sometimes.
There are too many people
Who never cease
To activate my id,
My primal urges
Centered around violent displays of rage.
As I've mentioned previously,
I have met soldiers
Stationed by the outskirts of the living,
But I've also met cowards,
Yellow-bellied beings
Without the guts to search
Within their souls,
To find the furor in the folds
Of their hearts and minds.
They feel as if they know depth,
Know peace and truth alike,
But they can only skim the surface
Of a pond
Engulfed with facts
But devoid of reasons.

I do not claim
To be able
To always aim towards inner meaning,
But I always aim in the direction
Beyond the obvious
And hope to possibly encourage growth
Among my colleagues and my family.

Many times,
I feel as if I am bound to fail,
As if I will struggle
To plunge towards the depths of my emotions,
Or possibly ascend
To the heights of euphoria.
But still I continue to hack my way
Through the jungle of jumbled gibberish,
Always attempting to hang on
To every word
Before the screeching
Of my inner critic
Muffles my cries for a continuous thought.

Yet this newfound self-discovery
Still allows me to seek companionship
Whether it be among the tormented.
Among the learned.
Among the hostile.
Among the lost.
Among the young.
They will all find their ways
Into the scattered pages
Of this poem.

It is an exercise in patience
To remain sober,
To not imbibe intolerance and impatience,
To not smoke away any possible inspiration,
To not inhale the pollution present in pools of exhaust
Filled with façades of hatred.

I reflect,
Focusing on my roots,
In which I rebelled against the elders,
As well as every single injustice
Present in the world
As well as in my life.
I remember each year
That I worshipped in manuscript format.
Contained were bleak outlooks,
Proletarian principles,
Unabashedly honest anger,
With the occasional airing of affection
For friends, nature, and thought.
Throughout these times,
I yearned,
Longed to evolve
As a Jew.
As a scribe.
As a lover.

In many ways I have moved forward,
Carrying the cargo of compound contents,
Shipping the subjects
And pushing the predicates down the line.
And the sentences stream
Into neat little packages
Filling the striations of the wood.
With support,
I have succeeded.
With allies of all ages I excel,
Even when this poetry
Does not play well with others.

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