Standard (EADGBE)

We emerged from youth all wide-eyed like the rest

Shedding skin faster than skin can grow

 And armed with hammers, feathers, blunt knives

Words to meet and to define and to, but you must know

 The same games that we played in dirt, in dusty schoolyards

 Has found a higher pitch and broader scale

 Than we feared possible, and someone must be picked last

 And one must bruise and one must fail

 And that still twitching bird was so deceived by a window

 So we eulogized fondly, we dug deep and threw

 Its elegant plumage and frantic black eyes in a hole

 And then we rushed out to kill something new, so we could bury that too

 The first chapters of lives almost made us give up altogether

Pushed towards tired forms of self-immolation

 That seemed so original, I must, we must never stop

Watching the sky with our hands in our pockets

 Stop peering in windows when we know doors are shut

 Stop yelling small stories and bad jokes and sorrows

 And my voice will scratch to yell many more

But before I spill the things I mean to hide away

 Or gouge my eyes with platitudes of sentiment

 I'll drown the urge for permanence and certainty

 Crouch down and scrawl my name with yours in wet cement