Better

To do better…

To be better…

Where do these ideas come from?

Self-congratulatory visions of utopia…

Because one can always do better

In the eyes of a world

That ignores

What it means

To live with
Heart!

Sitting around all day

Making 2cent analysis

About everyone you know

At the end of that day

All you’ll really know

For sure

Is that you wasted the day...

And all your little diagnosis’s

Are only distractions

From what you actually need to deal with

…Your fear

…Your shame

…Your regret

All the things you don’t want to see

The answers you feel

But turn out anyway

Because, to you

There’s no answer to your dilemma

But only because the answer that’s come

Isn't valid to you

Peer-driven desires

To reconcile things in life

That are contradictory

Or at least, appear to be

All so you can have

The things

You think

You want
But that’s not going to happen

And when you finally realize that

You’ll try

You’ll try to change the world around you

By changing

Or trying to change

The people around you

But that’s not going to happen either

What you need to do

Is open your eyes

To what you don’t want to see

This muted witness to its own life

Afraid

Even when it pretends

It isn’t

Afraid of getting to that point

Where it can admit

That you can never truly know anyone

And that you currently

Don’t

To admit being

Alone

Its this fear

That makes someone filled with regret

Attempt to fill their thoughts

With faith

In religious promises

Of the afterlife

…Not another life

But the afterlife…

Because they don’t want another life

They want rewards,

…Gifts for their 'sacrifices'

Not another life

To take what’s been learned onward

They don’t want to take it with them

When they go

Why?

Because they’ve wasted this life

Doing better…

Or trying to

And being better…

Or trying to

Placing their faith in integrity

All their actions filled with integrity

And every righteous choice made

Based upon that same integrity

Not from the dreams that screamed

From deep within their hearts

Too many of us believe in advice

A word all too often

Misinterpreted as wisdom

Advice that sounds righteous, utopian

Or filled with integrity

But the mask is pretentious, at best

Hiding the fact

That all it’s ever served to do
Was to help someone

Who’d long since forgotten how to live with heart

Cope with regret

As they were bleeding out whatever worth was left

From their aging bodies

And their saddened souls

So please

Don’t give advice

Or at least

Don’t ever give me advice

On how to be ‘better’

Or about being ‘better’

Do me the favor

Of only giving me advice

That’s actually

Made you inspired

That’s actually

Kept your heart

Like that of a child’s

Alive!

ⓒ 2010 Shawn Michael Quinn