Quiet Desperation

My childhood dreams slowly melt away taking
my hopes silently along with them
the youth see through me like
a window which impedes
their progress, my
experiences no
longer
relevent
like an old beggar
on the corner telling his
war stories about his greatest
moments fighting in a war we don’t
even remember the name of because we
were not born yet, what were my aspirations…
that my mom would live to be 104, that my wife
and children would admire and respect me, that I
would one day be a great writer before I was dead,
that I would get to spend more than just two weeks
a year once every ten years back in Italy where I grew
up, that I would act in films again, that they would teach
my poetry in schools, that I would see subsaharan Africa
that I would see Japan where I was born but left at two
that I would be a successful business man if not with
great wealth then at least financially secure and
independant, these were my goals, I also
wanted to find lasting romantic love
with a woman fully reciprocal
but most of all I wanted
to find a spiritual
teacher so that
I could continue
on the path of trance
which I embraked upon
at the age of 16 but it’s been
over 40 years that that door has
remained firmly closed to me and
so what I have left is what I share
with the rest of humanity and I turn
and embrace my fellow brothers and
sisters realizing that everyone of us was
taught from the age we could walk that we
must become someone and not nobodies and
this has left us all living lives of quiet desperation