Forget How We Remember
Variations on a theme by Shane Koyczan
Seeking Safe Harbor ~ Philip Brent Harris
~~~~~
Forget how we remember.
Forget the games we played in May that should not be played in December,
Since each bullet shot comes from a bigger gun
And we always keep them loaded just in case.
We court each human with enmity and it is all about soil, origin, or clan,
To nevermore portend.
So forget how we harshly rend reality
Like we are heinous con men,
Like an evil twin creating confusion,
Like we are all tame sheep to bleat and baa in unison,
Like we are totally bred,
Or dead.
Forget how we remember.
Forget how our parents promised we could be anything we wanted,
And how our time would come.
Yet, we dared not look the future directly in the eye, for fear we would be struck dumb.
Forget now, how we used to find any game escape
just to go somewhere we were feeling safe.
We would get stoned, toss off our responsibility,
Buy a dime of crystal that would boost us just enough
to have us thinking we might be enough,
How enough was just bluff,
How we feared we were getting drafted, and how soldiers came home crazy or in a pine box.
Forget how we remember.
Forget we said we would draft dodge and our folks said, “then you are not our sons.”
Still our footfalls into adulthood had us saying, “we’re the ones.”
Despite that, we were never truly confident,
Understood we hardly knew half the things we said we did.
We slung bull like fundamentalists spout sin.
We spoke future fear, not understanding it could someday replace our daily scene,
Taunt us with our choice of tools,
Invite us in, break us in the end, part-time work, no benefits.
We then but feigned to battle.
No choice, we settled; we knew that our life was no great success,
We could only linger, needs unexpressed.
We tried to dream, but not well,
hoping to sell our psyches expectation;
know future blight was all we feared.
Forget how we remember.
Once upon us, when time was young,
And dreams shown life-stippled,
Yet were never painted or sealed.
So, hope was something we needed to be feeling.
So, we could say our threadbare futile dream of life once had room to become.
So, loudly proclaim “this time, responsibility is our only choice.”
Because our loss is no action, no effort to make changes before we become belated.
We must make choices.
No figureheads need apply.
Believe that each choice of change conserves our chance of being alive,
And failure now has a finality more important than the act that we strive.
That in our war against insanity, annihilation,
We replied with determination, mistakes forgiven but no longer our weak excuse.
Now we decide we must live as members of one family,
Not just one group or one creed,
But a people whose choice wakes all humanity.
So that, I call you family
Because it’s right.
And when I ask you to now forget,
It’s because our future must not plagiarize our past.
So, forget our past.
Build upon the fact that everyone ever alive came from a caring mother,
Or one who could not,
Who from rape succumbed,
Who from drugs lost hope,
Who from poverty was laid low,
And in starting there we acknowledge our bond,
choose to rewrite the map to uncharted lands.
We can rebound.
Though uptight and beaten down, we must act before we rest.
Now is only,
With no limits.
Erase coordinates, false lines,
Boldly seize our new-found intention and sail beyond the map’s edge.
Choose to believe such hope belongs to us all.
Pledge to cause what looks unreachable
to be as incontrovertible as the false fact we cannot change.
We can change.
Let our daily lives be as dear to us as every emotion, taken or spent breath.
So, forget, just live every instant until death.
Every birth wish, love glance, hear this, life chance, just so, way to go.
Let us choose the right course this time.
Let us forget, live all the moments that are but don’t last,
Like the choice is one that we have made and
what we can become is who we say.
Because all we have is present, the now of moments,
all else past history.
Live now and only.
Tread lightly, comprehend we can choose our future,
So, each moment inspires the next,
So memories are just context of where we have been,
So that life becomes precious again; forget worry,
no time to waste on a smart bomb or nuclear winter fears.
Let now be our moment.
Let us live like we know it.
Let us act like we mean it.
Because world powers don’t care a bit if we end,
if it rains death or war’s ash,
If our story sends them a pot of cash,
If we do nothing rash.
So, know we are not all we might be,
And all we are is not what we have been, oh so far from good.
So discard every doubt, might, or perhaps.
Forget forgetting how we remember.
Live life, for no past exists, now the only story.
It’s time we learn flight,
Our sight heals scars, erases blight.
Let no one say we undid ourselves by just slacking.
The memories we are forgetting, in our best interest,
Will somehow mend our times around the precept
That we know all people are ourselves,
That knowledge we need stored in the very air.
Thus, what we choose has full bearing on who we become.
Look honestly in every mirror.
Realize our reflection is our chance to rewrite our own story.
Our new story starts:
“We will change.”
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