And Yes: When Broken Too

Conventional society deserves
Its own company: it gets on my nerves

But I avoid it pretty well somehow
With nerves preserved and pickled from the pain
Of being unconventional all day
Some nerve preserved to go against the grain
And then (cross-granular and squared away)
Some pickled nerve reserved to come again

Experience picked and pickled preserves
A sense of perspective and saves the nerves

This back-and-forth dialectic of now
Is the wonder of our wandering walk
The passage and the process of it all
Learning when to listen and when to talk
Learning when to listen especially

But I hate to listen to the cocksure
Like when proselytizers come to call
A convention for which the only cure
Is when the cocksure get knocked down like me
Here where cocksureness never could endure
To be cheek-by-jowl with its destiny

Our hearts will speak someday when they speak to
Answer the questions we ask of ourselves
Nobody knows these questions like we do
And so our hearts answer straight from themselves
When spoken to (and yes: when broken too)

+Steven Curtis Lance



Copyright MMVIII