Buried Shoes

This generation praises laziness,

Reveres complacency, worships procrastination,

Strives toward an ideal state of not caring.

 

You’re not cool if you try too hard.

Not cool if you care about school

More than splashing in an ocean deep pool of alcohol.

You don’t smoke? You like to read?

What a dweeb you are

For showing that you care

About something other than straightening your hair

And penciling in your eyebrows

And caking your face with overpriced makeup

To block any hint of feeling from seeping through your pores.

 

But passion keeps the world spinning

Like a slow motion top in infinite space

Where it’s never a disgrace to embrace emotion,

To give yourself over to frenzied feeling,

To passionate preoccupation with your version,

Your vision that you’ve pushed down so far that it’s

Almost forgotten.

 

But almost doesn’t only count in horseshoes.

It counts in any shoe you can think of "

Rainboots, music, tennis shoes, comedy,

Sandals, poetry, ballet flats, dancing.

These buried shoes are begging you

To bury your familiar feet inside them

So they may climb out of the stuffy soil

And into the cloudless sky of the passionate.