Advice to the Under-25 Crowd

In your day-to-day affairs 
such as work, school, domestic life, 
be selective in your arguments 
and conservative in speech: 
this will provide you a minor yet 
largely inexhaustible degree 
of comfort and respect.

Remember that your peers are 
just as young as you and 
barring sudden death or 
equally spontaneous disfigurement 
or enlightenment, 
they will always be as young as you. 

Beware of all cults, movements, and trends 
although it's unwise to dismiss them 
out of hand. Remember the Civil Rights Movement 
and protest of the Vietnam War 
prevented neither 
the Invasion of Iraq nor the 
curious election of Donald Trump. 
And that sexual identity -- even among 
us straights -- has never carried a banner, that 
love's strength rests more in biology 
than agreement. 

Form and improvise an education for yourself. 
Consider men like Tim O'Brien and 
Cormac McCarthy and their endurance 
of doubt and superstitious hierarchies. 
And read at least one thing by Elizabeth 
Gilbert. (Everyone else has.) 

Have a genuine sense of humor, to be regarded 
as vital as ears for music, deftness of agility, 
or soap for your body and your clothes. 

Buy soap from supermarkets and pharmacies. 

The rest are hollow enterprises composed 

of feckless, homunculus greedheads 

too smart or too scared 

to die in war. 

And lastly: don't overburden yourself. 

The soul grows with leisurely obsession, 
and the ones worth keeping know time 

runs on a palpable silence. 

****