My hope is write to 24 poems in 2024. I am sure they will have varying degrees of quality and connectivity.
This first poem was occasioned by my 45th birthday and is actually an update of something I wrote in 2020.

It is called … The Man.

The Man

There’s a man who lives inside my house
He looks a lot like me, but older
His stance slightly bent by the weight of a million missed expectations
His brow stuck sunken under the weight of cynicism and despair
With eyes dulled by the disappointing views of repeated missed marks, that seem to stare far off towards the horizon of a hope deferred

I see him a lot in the evenings, with his scowling reminders of another day wasted and his mocking disregard of the possibility of a mercy drenched new dawn

There’s a man who lives inside my house
He looks a lot like me, but younger
He stands upright with the spring of anticipated satisfaction
His face is lifted by the eager expectation of a million sensualities that might just deliver on their promises
With eyes bright, but twitching, and shining unnaturally with the appetite that is yet to taste consequence or perhaps just doesn’t care enough to weigh it

I see him a lot in the mornings, with his alluring lies he cruelly sings about the joy that would lie behind a throwing off of the shackles of a settled life

There’s a man who lives inside my house
He looks a lot like me, but wiser
He stands upright with a settled certainty of pleasant boundaries
His face weathered, but not scarred or hidden, like a middle aged man who has seen a lot but doesn’t resent it
His eyes are fixed and set on what seems a distant mark, a focus point of faith, of hope, of realism, of grace 

I see him a lot more than I used to but not as much as I would like with his words that fall somewhere between the graceless loathing of the old and the ceaseless longing of the young