youth
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I feel the air against my face,tugging the hair from my eyes.The sun sings its same old refrain,assuring me the day has no end,and this kingdom of dirt and lightis mine to rule. Come here, friend, I tell a ladybug,and study her through the glass,a tiny iced donut from Winchell’s shop.When I stare too long,wings
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Fiji, 1980s. The sun’s a smug bastard, grinning down, reminding me it’s summer here while Los Angeles shivers. Waves lap at the shore, warm as a lover’s whisper, every thirty seconds or so. I’m eighteen, cocky, standing in nemo-print trunks—pre-movie, mind you, maybe I inspired Pixar. Signed up for this swim-snorkel-underwater-cave deal. Sounded like a
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“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”— Lao Tzu I left behind boyhood’s warm embrace,To chase manhood’s fleeting, hurried pace,Thinking joy was locked in that new space,But found instead an empty, hollow place. Then spent my years in restless, vain pursuit,To find the boy, to lost joy impute,Believing he could make my heart refute,But
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The freight train steams, a beast of coal and fire, its breath a plume of white, a ghostly spire. It devours miles, relentless in its chase, through valleys deep and summits it can’t erase. Its hunger burns—a furnace, bright and white, consuming all that dares to cross its sight. In its wake, lives smolder,
