I’m tired of navigating
one-way streets,
waiting on lights
to change for me.
I’m tired of the homeless
glaring around
for guilt or shame
in my disciplined life.
The pitiful people
can glare at the sovereign sun
and imagine bravery
is mere avoidance.
The richest treasure in life
is intimacy:
no glaring streets,
no restraining lights.
Postscript:
This poem reflects the quiet exhaustion of moving through a world defined by human order and judgment: the one-way streets, the timed lights, the searching eyes that mistake discipline for detachment. At its center stands the sovereign sun, not as a symbol of pride or authority, but as the wordless truth of nature itself … radiant, impartial, beyond moral narrative.
Those who glare at it cannot bear its simplicity; they turn away and call their avoidance courage, mistaking reflection for reality. The poem’s journey moves from frustration with such moral posturing toward something freer — an understanding that intimacy and connection cannot grow from avoidance or imposed meaning. They arise only in the clear light of presence, when one stops interpreting every reflection and simply stands in the sun’s unspoken truth.
Primitive Joe 