Man-turing

Once a boy, wondering when manhood would fit.  Wanting my manhood to be genuine, like a dirty work shirt, still functional, completely functional, lying just organized looking folded, enough, next to a worn down broken in pair of leather gloves, making room for a stoic rigid toughness.  I no longer want to love like a boy.  I  am eager for that toughness to protect me from that anxious pain I've felt around love.  More feeling like artificial love.

Maybe not artificial but definitely not love. The desire! I am eager to have that discipline to protect me from my desire.  Not all my desire.  Likely the toxic desire.  The kind that leaves me hungry and inflamed.  I want the real nutrient filled love.

Stop thinking I'm holding the world, and wonder what is.

The love that strengthens boys,  melts the ego, and nurtures the balls, leaving an unwavering, bitter hope for love that is more fulfilling.

When will I have this certitude that men are supposed to have?
The wherewithal that is unaffected by romance's and jealousy's tug;
The immunity to the pain for being alone;
The carefree acceptance for the things about me un-grown;
The Being able to call wherever I have to lay my head home.

When will that come?

I sit thinking how odd it is to suggest, I un-regretfully, today could care less.  I wasted so much time wondering if I was doing manhood right.  I have reached this point where not knowing fits nice, maybe a little tight.

Is manhood a destination or a figment of societies' imagination?

Something about it feels more like humiliation, for falling short, more or less to the obligation that manhood is cessation.

I seem to encounter more lives that are forward looking, while I feel a stronger urge to look back.  These young-bloods look to be encountering choices still worthy of an investment, at a future I remember looking at so filled with stress from the uncertainty of whether I'd get respect. 

And so I sit, alone, not knowing, feeling as capable as ever of being gentle, blown away by not needing to claim something as my own.  I am more interested in beginning to understand we're never really fully grown.  Not so much fearing never reaching complete, just accepting I'm nearing it. 

The beauty seems to be that there is still a curious boy in me.

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In honor of the men who are contemplating on the Cosmic Importance of Male Initiation this weekend at the Center of Action and Contemplation.