You Have to Be Brave to Be Living Today

You have to be brave to be living today
To be loving today
To be trying today
To be not dying today
To be striving today
And alive-ing today
Not surviving today
Because we're all get by-ing today

You have to be thinking you’re some Arthur Lincoln
As my old friend the Scarecrow would say

To be living and loving and learning
And earning and forgetting and betting
And not sweating the fact
That you're living today

When words tend to fail and fall in pails
In puddles of indescribable things
Only to grow wings and fly past spoken thoughts
That can't sing cause they sting
When they hit the wrong notes

Words know how to fly or they die, that’s the thing
You gotta be flying, or you’re lying today

You have to have merit
And let it go by
Sometimes

Is my speech sounding like places you’ll go
Things that you‘ll try?
Well I love Dr. Seuss
So that’s probably why

And yes sir, I do like my green eggs with ham
Things do still surprise me
Like lottery winners, Morocco, and SPAM
I live in a world where meat can be canned

I’m addicted to shows about Housewives
People whose lives
Are less active than mine
I indulge in other people's passivity
My favorite activity is watching inactivity

I don’t like heights
I don’t like the rats
And there seems to be more
With each day that goes past

I don’t like the ignorance pervading
And invading my next door neighbors
And ice cream flavors
And school waivers
And parades

Why can't we just have a good parade?

You have to be careful when handling the truth
In my youth I was daring to say it was beauty
But now I know truth can get caught on your lips
And distorted before its supported and slips
Into something else other than what it really is

So you have to be careful when handling the truth

You have to be funny when dealing with life.
Though some may say funny is keeping you single
Those who date dullards will soon wanna mingle with people
Who can make their funny bones tingle
A six pack can fade and the mystery’s solved
But the love gets absolved when the passing of time gets involved

Look at me
I can make you smile
I know how to be funny when dealing with life on your behalf
I can be better than the half you're stuck to now

And when I can’t fix the problem
At least we can laugh

You have to be delicate when loving a woman

She won’t want your hands in her pockets too fast
You have to be delicate
And satisfying
And free

Cause if you aren't free
That’s the first thing that you need to be

But most of all kids
You just have to be brave

Maybe we’re not always smart as we should be
But I’m always compelled by how awesome we could be

The sons and the daughters
The savers and the saved
Let them engrave on my tombstone

I was here
I was there
I was scared

And still brave