“Boys”
This is for you.
“Rise up fallen fighters,
Rise and take your stance again”

I’m sorry.
It’s been so long,
But I’ve been gone
and I was lost
because I kept looking
for someone who wasn’t there
and as I searched
and searched
I got further and further away
and I kept seeing the same things
and the same things kept seeing me
and soon –
soon
I began to become the same
I forgot that I had a heart
a fierce heart
that beat like the lion’s drum
of the ferocious individual
of the ferocious spirit
of the un-conquerable truth

Instead, I chose sameness
and compromise
and I caged my lion’s heart
and the air and oceans
and all things on the surface
loved the caging
But the mountains and the earth
they wept,
for they were forgotten
and forsaken.

And even the Ocean, in it’s love
of the cage
was missing something
that it did not understand.
And so the oceans and the air
they raged, uninhibited
untethered
unbound
they flowed with no borders
and ceased to know themselves
because there was nothing
to crash into
nothing to allow containment
nothing to reflect.

This is your fault.
My son, this is your fault
It doesn’t matter if you know
or not.
It changes nothing
and you think it will ease the pain,
but your ignorance is a different kind
of pain
and because you’re not aware of the choice
you think your ignorance is the better pain.
But you’re wrong.
It’s the worse pain.
Much worse.

It is not a choice.
The balance of life is not a choice.
There must be balance for survival.
No balance equals death.
Are you a 21st century “Man”?
You want to join the side
of the oppressed?
You want to find sympathy with
your victims?
You want to be like them?
You want to be liked by them?
You’ve given up. And you are lost.
And your only choice now,
the only one available if you want to inherit
your lion’s heart
is whether you are going to
Stand and Rise Up
or
Not.

Are you a 21st Century Man?