There is tragedy
and there is
triumph.

Chart your life with
ups and downs,
blessings amidst sorrows
and bruises
and scars.

Catalog what you've been through
and tip the Creator
with the brim of your hat.
You've been a live one kid,
you've seen some scenes
but you've still got that
babyface
don'tya?

No one tells you how it is.
No one tells you that its all
flat.
Time passes linearly and you
never move
but choose.
You choose what comes next
or what doesn't.
One day you wake up and
you're older.
Not old,
but older.
You've been doing this for awhile and
you've got nothing much
to show for it.

Or do you?

Will anyone care when you die?
We're all dust
but we think we're so special.
Standing on elevators in silence
and avoiding each other's desperate
gaze.

We're dying on the outside
and on the inside,
pleading within our heads,

"YES!
We are here
and we have
been given a
voice!
We start at 0.
We are the
same."

But are we forgiven?

I've taken a lot of dumps
on people who might have potentially cared
what happened to my
ungrateful carcass.
How quick we are to judge and
how quick I was to condemn.

Tonight I think of ghosts gone by
and I think that I might actually enjoy
sitting across from them at a table
and closing the divide
but how wide these chasms are
who knows?

Last night I had a dream that I traveled back
to '04 and I warned them all.
I warned them not to make mistakes
as, if unchanged,
the stories were going to end badly.

And they were all alive,
Josh
most of
all.

There is tragedy
and there is triumph.

Today has brought the latter.

A second chance to
be something
and someone
a little more.

But I see where I've been
in the mirror every morning
and the ink never fades,
sin lingers on my shoulders.

And there too are my constant eyes and soul,
and every name likewise
on my
lips.