pass/fail

hey hey... if you're at penn this weekend go see Excelano's show... it's called Pass/Fail at 8 pm in Houston Hall... go. it'll be hot, i promise. i wrote a poem, it's called abroad:

I live in a city, priding itself on the passing of time
defining the present through projections of the past,
masking today’s currency with yesterday’s resonance
and cloaking the future with yesterday’s hesitance.

Daily, it’s evident as I walk through the streets
the way others walked long before
that standing on the shoulders of giants is not just a metaphor
but a alarm written for champions of progress, preaching
“look before you leap” cause
it’s not just where you land that’ll get you
it’s a world’s worth of history,
all the karma that'll lay aty our feet
which explains the crumbling ruins that speakle the street
the disarray strewn like glass at the beach worn so rough
it turns smooth as it turns lies on the shore
this city searches for love but only finds all that it lacks,
a life dripping ephemeral like a candle and its wax.

I live in a city that owns the luxury of perspective,
unafraid of its tracks.
already knowing the ride of the rise
and the pain of the fall
the guise of protection
the lies of disaster
the reconstruction after the death of the long every after
Rome fell and now it’s living in a constant state of resurrection,
a broken record spinning through divine intervention
a city living as a religion told through the new gospel and its testament
a mutated psalm bastardized by its life in the present tense.

I live in a city that sits on a hill
high like a smoke stack
a bird’s eye view of the waters rising,
mother nature writhing with each petty misstep
gasping as each day it regrets,
the rising fear of hate, the haste without sure relief,
echoing the flail of the stale stench of grief.
We’re flipping coins and calling sides,
But from here it’s clear that there’s no where to hide.
Not enough money in the world to buy enough oil
or fabricate the truth
or soil the soil laid by god in his youth.

Rome respects the future as it honors the past
Knowing all too well
that powerful empires are not built to last,
knowing that ruins lay forgotten and rotting underground
knowing all too well that the bigger the monster
the harder the fall
And when autumn comes,
it’ll drop life like its leaves

It knows that we’ll crash
and it knows we will fall,
Rome knows it wont be the end that’ll get us
but the hand of past that will cover us all.