literature

for my good friend of many years

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sleepy-punkboy's avatar
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Literature Text

kate, you were right about the mountains.
i remember middle school.
you used to draw mountains, great
towering dreams in a big big world.
in fact i have one taped up next to my bed,
a reminder that, as craig finn put it,
“we can all be something bigger.”
i have finished jack kerouac’s
dharma bums. at the end of it all,
he is alone at the top of a mountain,
a life he built for himself.
he finds hope in desolation peak.
he drinks his coffee and performs
glorious headstand meditations and
finds a whole universe,
empty and
                Awake.
i do not know if he was right about everything,
but he was right about something:

the best parts of his story
do not take place at the top of the mountain.
they take place as he lives and loves
and climbs with his best friend on this
empty/awake/desolate/beautiful earth.

kate, you were right about the mountains.

i think you were happiest drawing them,
concrete proof we are not
put on this earth to suffer.
we are not put on this earth to die,
not even those little-deaths of the
heart/mind/body/soul.
we will live and we will die and we will be reborn
but in the meantime let’s
make some pancakes&fuck&
climb/build/move/destroy mountains&
travel/run away/to something bigger&
ride trains&listen to all our favorite songs hell
make our own favorite songs&LOVE&
find our own small nirvanas
i don’t want to spend my time suffering
i want to spend my time here on desolation peak
in a way that matters
to me
i don’t give a fuck about the larger half
i am here now
i am in seventh grade watching someone i love
draw mountains
i am meditating next to the river
i am in my bed with a boy i love
finding small nirvanas in each other
i am dancing at a punk rock show
i am here now
& i am free.
Comments8
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Lawlessness45's avatar
Nice work on this. My only critique is the & symbol. It kind of breaks up the flow to have a symbol is there. Writing out the word would keep the flow and visual uniformity of the piece.