THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
I think it used to mean
making enough
every day
to provide for the people you love,
and loving enough
so that those people
would also provide for you.
It seems like now it means
making more than you could ever need or use
and keeping as much of it as possible
because you don’t have time
every day
to love anyone enough
for them to want to share.
TAKE FLIGHT
Build yourself a magical beast
stitch it from left-behind scraps
climb on its back
and ride it up into the sky
to the place where your fears have collected
into gigantic bundles.
Seed the clouds there
and knock loose your problems
break apart your worries
shake them into tiny droplets
that rain down over everything,
inspire new life,
and fuel that bountiful harvest
of formerly pent-up ideas.
DIVINE
They met in a hurricane
in the depths of a flood
as row houses crumbled
and trees were uprooted.
They huddled together
and took strength
in the idea
that they’d somehow been chosen
while the only world that they knew
folded on top of itself
and was washed away forever.
I’m going to be posting some new kids book stuff over the coming months. A lot of things nobody has ever seen so I thought I’d show it to you guys first. Let me know what you think! - Love, Dallas
OWNER’S MANUAL At the bottom of the pile Inside, somewhere near the middle pages, Pure poetry. It’s remarkable. You’d agree. Sadly,
buried, and missing a cover
there is a book.
It isn’t a popular book
and the author’s name
you’d never know.
But it is truly a work of art
written just for you.
there is a sentence
that best describes your life
and answers all the questions you’ve ever had.
you’ll never read it
because it is getting late
and you have work in the morning
and you are already thinking about
how to beat traffic.
UNFAMILIAR PLACES START TODAY
If you didn’t fall asleep on the black sand beach
or wrapped in a field of daisies
in the cold mist on top of a mountain
or singing songs in the back of a beat up car
not knowing the driver’s last name
or the exact destination-
If you didn’t fall asleep without pillows,
blankets,
or even your bearings
in a shirt that wasn’t your own,
with your shoes on,
by a campfire,
listening to muddled conversations
about impractical philosophies-
If you didn’t fall asleep anywhere important,
with anyone new,
thinking anything interesting-
then it is almost certain
that in the morning
you didn’t wake up there either.
I love it when this happens! Someone took my poem and made it into a photo and used it to stoke people out all around the world. The future is rad! - Dallas
(via jessicaalmeida9)
YOUNG TROUBLE
We don’t pay much attention to the elderly.
Even though they probably know more than us
about what it all truly means.
Even when they’ve done something stellar
like helped win a war fifteen presidents ago
or built the first car
or outlived their entire families
with no special diet or exercise routine to speak of.
Even then we don’t give them much of our time
or try keep them around
close enough so we can listen.
Maybe it’s because they talk so slow
and move so slow
and we’re busy living so fast
scrambling about and trying to fit it all in
burning our youth at both ends
so by the time we get to their age
we’ll have all kinds of fantastic answers
to all kinds of amazing questions.
Fantastic answers to amazing questions…
that no one
will pay much attention to
at all.
These new kids poems are super fun to share. I hope everyone is enjoying reading them as much as I’m enjoying writing them!
