When you’re young,
you look for something to worship,
you find a uniform,
adopt an identity,
become a noun.

Then you rebel;
you resent not having your own identity,
you are suicidally disgusted with yourself
for exuberantly accepting a generic mystique.

And when you finally try to be unique,
most of your energy is spent criticising others
because it is easier to define what you are not
than what you are.

Eventually you grow tired of identity jockeying,
and realize there is nothing to be gained
from judging anything other than your own progress.

I want you to be my mistress for a lifetime.

I don’t want to carry the weight of the world with you,
or perpetually and publicly rearrange life’s building blocks
with a goal in mind.
That would be a waste of magic.
I want to sneak into your apartment when there is a blackout,
where you have lit candles and wait for me,
naked under a blanket,
our bodies greet each other with a warm shiver,
refugees from the dutiful, the routine.

We preserve our sense of wonder as if it is life itself,
We will not get in line and march,
We will not waste the magic.

-Craig Hordlow
craighordlow.com

The lover I still seek
is better than me.

Infinitely small and large,
She has been where I am before,
Where they gave her trophies she wouldn’t accept.
But you can see them in her eyes.

The answer to everything is in her now
and at no other time.

She is always slightly out of reach.

The only thing she doesn’t know
is that she is too good for me.

And that’s why I haven’t found her yet.

-Craig Hordlow
craighordlow.com