THE MEN THAT DON'T FIT IN - Robert W. Service

There's a race of men that don't fit in,

    A race that can't stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

    And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

    And they climb the mountain's crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

    And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;

    They are strong and brave and true;

But they're always tired of the things that are,

    And they want the strange and new.

They say: "Could I find my proper groove,

    What a deep mark I would make!"

So they chop and change, and each fresh move

    Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs

    With a brilliant, fitful pace,

It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones

    Who win in the lifelong race.

And each forgets that his youth has fled,

    Forgets that his prime is past,

Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,

    In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;

    He has just done things by half.

Life's been a jolly good joke on him,

    And now is the time to laugh.

Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;

    He was never meant to win;

He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;

    He's a man who won't fit in.

Icarus, The Fool - Riley R.

It is easy to think me a fool,

the foolish boy whose foolish dreams

melted his wings and

broke his father’s heart.

What is harder to see:

I knew the math of it all,

remembered the geometry of

wax and feathers

so well I could taste it on my tongue

scraping like cardamom

and sour sweet like tangerines

on the roof of my mouth.

Height and wind speed,

melting points and velocity,

lift and thrust,

bird wings turned to equations

I held in my heart.

But oh,

to fly is nothing at all like math.

It is nothing at all like diagrams of

birds and insects and cloud formations.

To see the sun, The Sun, oh,

to spread your fingers through it’s warmth

as the air becomes tangible like the sea,

oh, there was no room in this heart for

the coldness of figures,

they were melted long long before my wings.

So judge, though the sky has never loved you

and I will yearn for the sun, The Sun,

oh,

from the bottom of the sea.