Stand your ground, or step forward.

   Moving backwards is not healthy. Time expires, the routes change as the distance grows, and you have gained so much wisdom from the day-to-day journey.

   You got where you are by traveling where you have been.

   It’s all too easy to become complacent in the moment, but what is keeping you there?

   Think of all that is ahead. Keep moving.

   Leave your troubles, or your pain, behind.

   It’s not the past that holds you back, but what prevents you from moving ahead.

   Emotional traffic and fear has built up, yes, but attitude and mind control can help breakthrough the barriers.

   We move on for a reason.

   Many times the unknown is healthier than knowing, or remembering, where you have been.

© 2018 j.g. lewis

There are those days when you can’t do what you intend to do; when you can’t do the things you regularly do with the consistency you usually do them.
   It is an interruption to both your will and your way.
   There are too many things interfering, or clouding your intention (or your judgment). You are unable to do what you feel obligated to do.
   You end up struggling through whatever you are doing. Even your expectations become unclear, and all you are looking for is clarity.
   When you can’t do what you normally do, you simply do what you can.
   This is one of those days.
   Sadly, there have been a few too many of those days lately.

Eyes wide open

in the dark, blood rushing, pounding heart. Still I cannot see.

Can you believe, will you find relief

walking down once-familiar streets?

Before light to the darkness of the dream, or the dawn,

or the dread,

now only streetlights. I wake. I walk, I wonder.

Halogen hum overhead, the only sound, above scorched earth

or snow-covered ground.

Only one reason for being here, everything else

is gone.

Let me sleep.

Let dreams whisper. I’ve got thoughts, which must come out,

I shouldn’t need to shout. I cannot listen.

Below a moonlight serenade, the homeless search

for shelter and sustenance, while new lover’s trade

secrets

behind the door. Promises not shared before.

Not with each other.

I wander. These were once streets, bursting with kindness.

The sidewalks, now, little more than foreign, there is no welcome here.

Not in the way it was, as I left it.

Do you take

what is there, take the care, or do you wait to lay your heart

before the soul who once listened to all you know,

and found comfort. In my voice there was enough,

yet now it is torn with edges

rough.

What was still is. Or is it? There is value in a thought.

A struggle with contempt

of dreams I might have spent, but not wisely.

There is no warmth. I will go back from where I came,

my presence will remain.

© 2016 j.g. lewis

What we leave behind, discard or forget, accumulates.
Each day and annually, an atmosphere we have created,
an environment that we do not pay enough attention to.
We walk on by. We will go our own way, individually
and collectively. It all adds up. We always seem to forget.
It is our nature, failing to see where this is leading or even
remembering what was there; before now, concerning
ourselves only with the present. We’ve had enough snow,
recently, to conceal the dirt and disorder covering this city.
Once gone, will we even see what we have been through?

© 2023 j.g. lewis

Our foremost thoughts emboldened by optimism, perhaps hope, if only chance could elevate from the deceit or dysthymia clouding a never-ending gap of misfortune. If only they had cared, if they had listened beyond the words they thought they wanted to hear. Experience is a moving force in its presence or absence. I have learned to say nothing. I, instead, have pages full of words describing and detailing corporate ineptitude. No decisions have been made or will be considered by a hierarchical system designed to keep people in a place separated more by class than by skill. Each level must pledge allegiance to the one before, and cater to the one above, respecting conditions imposed simply because they must. It is how it has always been done, even in days of rampant change — societal, political, or technological — the old ways of the world persist and will continue to as long as the need for power exists. And it does. It will. It is the way, as before and after. Continuity persists. We all may advance, but is it progress? Will we always question? Are we moved?

© 2023 j,g, lewis