To S.G. Glover:
Trajectory, Distance, and the Mathematics of Living

You always knew you would do something
and be
someone.

Seems like you knew what and who
presciently.

Outrageous humor + deadly serious mindset + physical peril =
stardom,
celebrity,
falling star.

Life broke your teeth
but you bit back,
chewed marrow from the threat of failure
and spit it back in the face of mediocrity.

Most men fear to glance at what you stare into.
Then again, most men never know 
the taste of marrow,
blood,
or exhilaration of mocking one’s fears.
Most men – if you can call them men – suckle like infants
their whole lives,
holding onto the skirt 
of a safe mommy universe.

Did you count the cost first?
Was it ever on your mind:
Pain + spectacle + stubbornness =
launch into space and millions of hearts and minds?

Leaf, liquor, powder, papercuts, staples, fire:
all beckon and deter, lower and lift.
They all give and take.

Many critiqued and mocked your mettle
until, of course, it launched you like a rocket into outer space.
Then, everyone wanted to ride your exhaust into the stratosphere
and join your constellation as you ascended.

Isn’t that the way of things?
Judgement and vitriol 
until the sweetness of success,
then idol worship.

The attitude and bullheadedness that led to vision
and success
also brought you destruction.
You wielded destruction for a time,
then it wielded you.

The mocker became the mockee.
I am not judging you.
We have all been there.
Hard lessons. 

True friends spoke what needed speaking,
painful truth,
searing reality.
The wounds of a friend 
are healing. 

Sometimes it is hard to discern which voices love us and which ones
call for our demise.
The math of life is often difficult to get right.
Equations get jumbled.
We lose track of the steps to solve for X.
Eventually, you listened to the Instructor.

Meditation for the mathematics of life: 

Love + painful truth + ears to hear =
life,
second chances,
Phoenix rising.