Life is Like Riding a Motorcycle: spoken word

As I mention in the video, I’ve been writing poetry for a long time, but I’ve never actually read any of it out loud before. 😛 I hope you enjoy this!

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They will sit there all worried looks and crossed arms, they will berate you with firm lips and closed mouths, and still others will turn away and hustle wide-eyed children
away
from you lest they absorb your “insanity.”
But is that Life?
When I ride,
Catapulting breathless around corners and
Soaring over hillside roads,
I hug myselfmin a full-face helmet, a leather jacket, and gloves.
I clad myself also in the armor that
This Could Be My Last Ride
Because of cellphones and “cagers” and accidents and pedestrians and deer and bad roads and freak shit.
And I rest in the peaceful wisdom losing a child gave me that
Life is Short.

We choose:
Trust, innocence, openness... it’s exactly the same
in the boardroom
in the bedroom
in the store
in the classroom
in the streets...

I skyrocket around corners with my bones wrapped up in a meat suit veneered with leather at sixty-eight miles per hour and
I am eyes wide open.
I am breathless, deathless, devoid of anything BUT the joyous damce of rubber and gravity and
The sun on my face
The wind like Jesus’ hand on my chest and
The feeling of flying in my heart.
And at the end
When I count up my golden seconds
I will have not been caged.
I will have wrapped my arms around Life and given her beautiful face a french kiss
And adored her with every bit of gorgeous stardust this body has within it.

— written 8 February 2016