Young and Full of Hope

Young and Full of Hope

In those days we were young and full of hope
and faith and greed and love’s neurotic bile
In ignorance and haste, we threw away
What most would take a lifetime to attain

And looking back I cannot truly say
What drove us to that point of no return
When madness took us to that stony brink
Where sanity and reason took their leave.

We changed in time but nothing really changed
Essentially we are the very same
Unmodified in essence; vicious still
For no one ever changes deep inside

The primal force of deep emotion draws
Its essence from the earliest of years
We learned our lessons young: before we met
in half-forgotten adolescent days.

Like lions circling ’round each other still
Each always knowing where the other stands
The space between us carefully maintained
A no-man’s land of safety: cool detente

Protects us both from facing what we are
(Though in those years we did learn to accept
Ourselves in essence: questioning our thoughts
And motives; self-acceptance our reward).

Alone, I function better; for I know
My idiosyncratic, thorny mind
With brambles sharp and traps of spiders’ silk
Will kill the unsuspecting, hopeful dreams

Of those who would, in love of something new
Want me to be the thing they think they need
They never sense the predator beneath
Carnivorous with venom, teeth, and claws.

And what of you: are you that deadly thing
That in my mind will always have its place
Or have you truly left all that behind
Become a cat where once there was a lion

Malevolent and mighty in its rage?
For there’s the spark: that misanthropic gaze
From up on high: the lowly human ants
whose separation from us was our bond.