While We Are Young
by Anthony Lamar Reid 

While the here is now,
let’s be the Gods we pray to.
Let us be present.

For now, while we are here, let us be here.

The future is a projection of transfixed worry. A streaming apparition of the to be, the next, the happening soon, the forever, the encoded anxiety of am I. Forget the future, become the I am, because you are. Tomorrow is never. Now is here, forever. Be here, now forever.

Push against it, you can. Push against the hardness of that thing that keeps you enthralled in the unknown- the thing that abducts your mind into, yet created, time. The mind is more powerful than any clock. The mind creates time and tells it. The mind pushes itself into the place where the then was once here and knows that if it stays there, it can be anywhere. Be everywhere in your mind. We have here, everywhere.

Reclaim the body- be aware of the push, the push into that place. Retract that which extends there. Unseat yourself from the dinner you can afford because of the job that you are going to get, with the degree you earned, next to the man that loves you now, in the body that you now love too. And if ever you do not know where to extend, where to reach, what to hold on to, know that you can hold on to yourself. Hold yourself right here.

And let there be light and wind, and wings, and love, and wings of love, and life, and laughter, and happiness, and living laughter that loves happiness and takes flight with wings into the wind right here into the light. I want the happiness to be infectious. I want it to be an epidemic. So happy, it’s frightening. Obese in this distilled joy. Eyes rutting over from the fat in our cheeks, when we smile. Thunderous applause from our thick palms, applause for ourselves. Hearts almost stopping, clogged, from the happiness, struggling happily, to trudge through it. Belly convulsing in indulgent laughs about almost nothing except for the pure humor of laugher. While we are young let’s laugh.

Let’s live right now, for now– like the only ones left. While we are young let’s care the most. Let’s be here where the sun always shines and the air is cool. Most of us are hurting to be alive, anyway. So let’s live, while we are young. Let’s sit under our halos now, we deserve that. Be the God who saved you. Save yourself.

For God’s sake, let’s sit, if we are sitting. Let’s eat what we are eating while we are eating it- good things. Let’s live in the books we read right as we entreat the words. Hug each other tight while we are gripping each other. Be into each other, deep, while we are right here. Let’s do what we are doing while we are doing it. Let us love and be here.