If you never wake
I’ll die and master beside manner
just to be the first keeper you see
on the other side

And if you lose the faith
I’ll study eighty tender reasons
to wait

Cause I’ll never go
Never leave you alone
you can’t chase away this chaser
won’t outpace this pacer
I’ll never go

If you fill with hate
I’ll love you till my kindness
moves you to break

If you lose the traits
that I love most
still I won’t

I’ll never go
Never leave you alone
you can’t chase away this chaser
won’t outpace this pacer
I’ll never go

 

---

:: about the 54 poems written at 27 ::

After much deliberation, I decided to keep the whole tradition of doubling my age and writing that many poems in a year. You’ll notice that April Thirtyish has already passed, so I’m late in posting. I’ve gotten about half of them written and will begin posting this week.

I started this whole mess with 46 poems written at 23, most of which are still up on the site and many of which are awful. Those poems I wrote because I read somewhere that the best age for poetry is 23. I was turning 24 and had an existential crisis.

Then I got over it.

Suddenly I was 25 and thought, “Why not do it again?” So I doubled my age and wrote 50 poems at 25. Again, most of these are still on the site and I’m proud of one or two of them.

Now I’m twenty-eight and it’s almost a principle, almost an undeniable fact of life. When the wild Lancelot is in his native habitat and his age is in an odd year, he will be secreting poetry. I do this because poetry is important, because we must take an active role in the creation of new language or else our language dies.

That means I must write, I must learn how to create better poems even if I’m awful at it — everyone must because the fate of our culture’s at stake. For me, this year, that’s 54 poems at 27.

So I’ll schedule these suckers out and give it a go. Follow along with the category 54 @ 27.

cover image by Paul Chiorean

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