You Were More Before.

By Richard MacNeill

It was time. We stood

at our own starting lines

to run at our own pace

to our own imagined finish.

At the bang 

I began to race

then felt I was alone

and saw they were all running backwards.

Then the track disappeared.

I found a wagon and got on

and when the wheels broke in the mud

I leaped off and began fixing it,

but they were voting to stay there forever.

I began to build a fort

where we could live forever,

but they started making rules and being mean

and it wasn’t fun, anymore.

I walked to my own remembered woodland isolation.

They threw rocks at me and yelled 

that I worshipped their devil

whom I had never talked to.

They don’t know there are so many devils

and none of them are that bad.

Keep with the culture in your heart.

Go to it when you’ve wandered.

You need not a path; the race was a lie.

Do not attach your choices

to those who do not dare

or your vision will shrivel

and you will dine on empty energy

unless you remember who you were

before.  

Do not attach your choices 

to anyone or anything 

except your truest vision

and remember, you were more

before.

By Richard MacNeill