Sometimes it hits me like a panic,
grips me by the throat,
sits heavy on my chest.

I want to go screaming down every street
like a madman or Paul Revere.

I want to shake every last person awake
no matter how far gone
and say:

Can you hear it?
The music of our aging generation?
Can you feel the futility of our scramble
toward secure retirement?

How many years will we spend lost
concocting master plans we never act upon?
How many years will we spend
remixing the past into nostalgia,
performing maintenance on the mirages
our smart phones guide us to?

I want to burst every last person’s bubble,
I want to rip off all their masks,
I want to smash all their screens.
I want to tell them:

Remember to look at the sky,
the sun, the moon, the stars.
I want to tell them to remember to breathe,
to look at one another in the eyes
when they pass by on the street,
to acknowledge the aching fires in their guts.

When will we stop waiting to live?
When will we become truly embodied,
opening fully into the majesty of our birthrights?

These bodies don’t define us,
but they are all we really have.
They cry out to us and yet
we do our best to quiet them
like children speaking out of turn.

Listen:
Every song on the radio
is just another lamentation of what’s been lost —
the dirges of generations gone before.

And now, every time I lose myself in music
I remember what it is to be alive.
It’s only ever just been this:
Each moment, a celebration
followed by silence.