maybe all is well in the world when we bare our teeth and let the
fur stand straight up from our necks and make no bones
about how close it is we really do sit to the earth,
human as we are,
flawed as we are,

little gut buckets of regret; like summer and fall in expected,
IF A THEN B relationships of motivation and change of heart

this is not personal

passion is for everyone, an undercooked mass-produced commodity that
goes down quick — its taste is often that of sweat trickling down the small of a back

passion in love and hate, passion in reason, things deteriorate
passionately as passion is given away on the road and found drowning
in the bottom of a glass of beer its gills flooded
with the salt of the earth

picture the melancholy of its heartbeat as it enters a new room,
knowing its coming is strung to its going, as the sunrise is to the sunset more than anything else we share

this legacy we are all born from and that men and women
have died for, shamelessly…

…but, no: this much should be said:

none of this was personal.