Long Lost Treasure

It's amazing the treasures one comes across while in the process of preparing to transfer one's belongings from residence a to residence b. Last night I discovered a whole slew of poetry I had written in my late teens and early 20s. A lot of it is awful but here is one I particularly like. I remember its inception.

I was sitting in my car one evening, in traffic, on Highway 183 in Dallas, Texas. I had just turned 23 a couple of months before and I had what I guess one would call an epiphany. It was as if I stepped outside myself for the very first time and looked in on my life and upbringing through objective eyes. I think that evening was the very first time I had an “adult” moment. A moment where you really leave your childhood and all its illusions behind and you come face to face with reality. I was on automatic pilot for the rest of my drive home. As I was turning on to my street I looked up behind the traffic lights and saw the sunset behind the trees, which looked black and broken in the glare. I felt very empty and I heard the words in my head and so I entitled it

Coming of Age.

Painfully peering,
a perceptive perspective.
Rationalizing realizations,
redirecting remorse.
Baneful bourgeois baggage.
Attributable acquiescence,
acquisition, or atrophy?
Storied sustenance.
Lush and languid,
en forme de larme.
Falling down
full, firm, fallow, visage.