Twenty-Seven

Seems like when birthdays come around we get nostalgic and start thinking of where we have been and where we are going. I wrote this on my 27th Birthday last year, this is the first and only version I wrote and have not been back to it.




Scattered throughout a Tel Aviv Mall
there is a 27-year-old man who died,
ten years ago.
He was a suicide bomber.
He took other people with him.

Under the freeway near Balboa park,
a 27 year-old-man sleeps
on a bed made of eucalyptus leaves.
At night he sneaks into the park
and rummages for food.

Four years ago, somewhere in Africa
a 23 year-old woman,
had her virginity taken from her.
She just died of a disease that not one
of the 6.5 billion people on this planet can cure.

Today there is a 27 year-old man
that writes a poem about what
could have been- had the sands of time
been shaken up and the grain representing me,
landed in a different place.