Teachers
For direction
Look to yourself
For purpose,
Look to yourself
For inspiration,
Look to yourself
For power,
Look to yourself
For love,
Look to yourself
For certainty,
Look to yourself
For truth,
Look to yourself
For trust,
Look to yourself
For change,
Look to yourself
For opportunity,
Look to yourself
For life,
Look to yourself
For friendship,
Look to yourself
Look to yourself!
Look to yourself!
Look to yourself!
And then look to others
Who look to themselves
And from there
In limited circumstances
Look to me
To honor your answers
Right. Here.
My purpose was clear
When I was unaware
That I had been steered.
Even my rebellions
My howling hellion days
Weren’t mine
But designs drawn
Against the proud edges
of my family portrait
My first life
Was a disintegration
A dis membering of ideas
Of the dreams and memes
And moments of my self.
A discovery of unhappinesses
Not my own
But an inheritance
Of shit talking squawking clowns
Each as given
As my hazel eyes
My big hands
And my hard flat feet
The family luggage
Patiently embossed
With my name
And now as I find myself
Finally here.
Now old, old and old enough
To let go and go again
Into who is next
I go re membered and re solved
An explorer, a humble navigator,
Who knows his worth in gold
A man who doesn’t fear his shadow
Nor the shadows in the world
From this vantage
Every horizon is a possibility
Every conversation a breeze
To be sailed on
To new dreams
And where do I want to go?
Where would the longing winds take me?
But to seek and seek to claim
The lands right here
Embracing the friendship
Of this very place
Beneath my own big feet
Jeff Hamaoui is a co-founder and partner of MEA and Regen Communities, an entrepreneur, sage, wit, and poet. He’s developing a book and thought leadership on the topic of adult friendship.