because it doesn't matter who you are as long as you DREAM,
because if your life feels entirely built of styrofoam then you will be
inclined towards CHANGE,
you will be seeking something different from the trash in the streets,
plastic bags pressed against wire fences by angry winds.
because if you never got up and did anything then you would do NOTHING,
you would BE nothing, you would be wasted,
because if our children grow up to believe in sentence-long diatribes
against taxes, the government, big ideas they can't comprehend but pretend to hate,
we will have failed utterly.
because the fake things in the world glitter more brightly,
because in an airplane landing at night all of civilization is laid out pretty
in metric grids, just waiting to be touched,
but when you land burned-out bulbs break themselves on street corners
in the hands of angry gods.
because i believe in the sanctity of CHILDHOOD, the sanctity of
imaginative space where nothing can destroy you but yourself.
because i try to teach violent hands and tired minds
what literature is, what making art MEANS.
because the diamond in the rough
is rarely hewn by foreign hands, we are bound to find OURSELVES
in these dim, deep piles of ash.
because the greatest impetus you will ever have is your own ego,
because if you don't decide to do it then no one else will either,
because in a hundred years all there will be
is brown skin, dark eyes, hungry hearts and mouths,
the dirty urbanity that skins its knees daily on empty doorsteps.
you are my project, and my heart is too full up now
to stay here any longer,
but i am duty bound to come back to these streets
because what if no one else will say what i see?