We’re Not Timeless

Paper airplanes don’t fly

They crash into the ground

And falling isn’t flying

That’s a child’s movie’s lie.

For those of us still battered

By the tattered flags of change

There are only vast skyscrapers stretched

In Babel’s hope that it might last- and not be swept away.

It’s a lie of egomania

That what we do will linger

To see the final sunset, to watch the final rise,

Of something built on purpose where the stones won’t pay the price.

For all of our inadequacy

For the coffin rock we’ve carved

For the sake of the blind who will not read

Of our monumental glory, and the worth we’d self-prescribed.

I hope one day the sun will shine

Upon our mounds of fallen steel

For the sake of our reflection, the nothing that can last,

As we stand before an empty mirror, the fresh blank space,

Of all we hoped we might’ve been now lost in someone’s past.

Where the grass can now grow taller

Where our ash will help trees rise

In all the ways we never could,

In awe of what will stay-

For the sake of what’s gone on without us

When we all have gone away.