Come on baby.

You should be here by now

but you are lazy.

Beatific.

Bathing in a second skin

hand-knitted by your mother’s blastocyst.

Your invisible smile reigns

over this one-eyed world in which you are king

but come on baby.

I know you don’t want to relinquish your VIP seat.

I know you have everything you need

right here.

Drinks on tap.

Food comes before you know that you’re hungry.

I mean, the service here is just heavenly.

You sleep and eat and sleep and eat

and sleep and eat

in a world made only of melody.

Perennially cradled,

your mode of transportation

is a giant avocado-shaped kiss.

I know you’re thinking

it can’t get any better than this.

And you would be right.

But the world has so many more

and other things for you to explore.

I’d like to introduce you to a concept called light.

I’d like to be there

when you first encounter space

and though you will miss the time

when you and not you was a continuous line

you will learn that absence is a place

into which you will grow.

That lack is just a placeholder

for everything you have yet to know.

And that like you,

the world is a constant smashing of cells,

a mathematical spell of potential

that starts with two

and becomes exponential.

You will also learn that potential is nothing

and that the only way to become who you are

is to fucking do something.

You will learn that the world is a mess.

At times you will regret your inevitable choice

to crawl into consciousness

as you struggle to stay balanced

on a world that spins and burns and spin and burns

and spins and burns

and typically

this would be the place where the poem turns.

Where I tell you that the human race

is a failed experiment.

That we have made such a mess of our house

you should probably stay in there,

or find another way out

but that’s chickenshit

because this world will be infinitely better

by virtue of having you in it.

I mean, not literally.

There’s a 99.9% chance you won’t change history.

Or find a cure for Boris Johnson.

Or win an Oscar.

Or a Nobel prize.

But there is a 99.9% chance that you will have eyes.

And those eyes, whether or not they work,

will look into someone else’s

and love them from the bottom

of your biological imperative.

And for as long as you live,

you will change the history

of the small group of people

who live and love in your vicinity.

You will make hideous choices

and wake up in the cracks of those choices

and miss irretrievable chances

and fall in love with complete arses

and dance like a fish on cocaine

and have at least one truly apocalyptic haircut

but you will get up

and you will find a way to balance on the knife-edge

where your desire to affect change

meets your wonder at life right now

and baby

I won’t tell you how to do that.

Because I don’t fucking know.

At minus-one-day-old

you are smarter than I will ever be

and if you are anything like your brother

then I mean that literally.

But come on baby.

Come on because it’s time to go.

I know you don’t want to give up your front row seat

at this one-person show.

I know you are about to get to the good bit.

You’ve heard this story has a twist

but like the rest of us,

you’ll have to muddle through without that knowledge

‘cause it’s time to split.

Break out of that skin and be a person.

Make a you-shaped space for the universe to rebuild itself around.

Play your first breath and get used to the sound

because this song will be spinning

a long time.

Baby let’s go. Let the crowd go wild

with the first tandemless drum of your heart.

You have reached the finish line.

It’s time to start.