Poem - If: A Rewrite by Dylan Timberlake

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Dylan Timberlake

Poems

- If: A Rewrite

If: A Rewrite
by Dylan Timberlake

If you can lose your blame without keeping your head.
If you can doubt society when all men trust you,
But not make allowance for your doubting too.
If you can stop waiting, and not be tired by growing,
Or being lied about, and deconstruct the lies.
Or being raped or seeing your image raped and murdered by strangers, friends and lovers,
Don't give way to Liberalism,
Don't give way to insidious promises,
And yet don't be afraid to look too good, nor talk too wise.
If you can dream and neither deny your dreams, nor hide from them;
If you can think and yet be self-reflexive in your thinking too;
If you can share your Triumph and Disaster with your sisters, mothers,
Brothers and kindred spirits alike;
And grieve disaster and celebrate the triumphant just the same;
If you can bear to hear that the truth only benefits some,
And twist that truth until its polymorphousness sings of otherness and difference
Stings of post-capitalistic casualties
If you can bear to watch your sense of self destroyed at every turn
Glance
Phrase
And fist
And yet struggle still to occupy a paradoxical healing space:
If you can see that gambling is not about winnings, but about waging to trust "just one more time",
It's about listening to your inner voice
And thereby abandoning the game of pitch and toss,
If you can gamble in this way, and still admit your losses,
If you can renew your heart, and stretch your sinew, and calm your nerve, and so REST when everything inside you tells you to keep going!
If you can mock at crowds and keep your sanity,
Or judge Kings nor lose your goddess status,
If all men count with you, and you can manage to stop counting,
If you can accept and affirm a forgiving moment with sixty seconds of forest, stream, field, rock, sun, bird, air and earth
You will realize that you cannot own the earth
And everything that's in it is not a commodity,
And which is more my daughter and son, you will learn to feel the interconnectedness of everything.

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Copyright © 2002 Dylan Timberlake, sffworld.com. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author. The author has submitted the work in accordance with and in agreement with the following Submission Guidelines