To Jon Stewart.

Your hair has gone silver in recent years,

currents of slick metal gracing backwards like a river,

hinting to the yamaka you are known to wear at times

your smile is one part smug, one part intelligent, and one part,

a dream.

 

i watch your political commentary in the safe haven of my kitchen

alone, my parents and brother working the graveyard shift.

i repeat for emphasis, i watch your political commentary. alone.

 

i eat my dinner as a youthful courtier while

you deliver insightful, spot on and humorous commentary on world issues.

your jokes all hit the ground running. going for the gold.

and the finish line is my heart.

your late night television program is an hour long

eden for liberal youth. Lush, green with

progressive ideology but

amidst the green i see the piercing blue of your eyes.

 

let's talk about sarah palin's recent teleprompter disaster in iowa, jon.

and i'll laugh and remember your performance in Wishful Thinking,

the 1996 rom com starring drew barrymore.

your hair wasn't yet gray then, jon.

 

yes, yes, you were making movies before i was even born.

and yes, you're married. and yes, you proposed to your wife

via crossword puzzle which is despicably adorable

but i could take her in a fight, easy.

unlike "tracy" i haven't had so many years to become weak and frail.

 

 our eventual romance aside,

how do you do it?

how does one hold talent within this cage people call a body?

 

it is such a gift to carry both wisdom and

comedy on your shoulders.

to bear the brunt of power, to be able to change someone's mind

with one witty line?

 

i'm still a 16 year old girl, sometimes

i don't know how to open car doors but i look at my hands

and know that i can hold potential.

i hear people laugh and know that within those crashing sound waves is change.

 

when told that our world is broken, or our society is messed up, i say: no.

there is so much possibility here. and now  within all these people around me

and when i'm not afraid i dare to say that there is something special

within me. i

know there is stardust in the molecular compounds of my skin

and when i see my reflection i look in the black of my eyes

and amidst that plunge of nothingness i see a beginning.

 

i see the youth of my generation making something better.

we may be lazy and dumb and stupid and immature and

liable to spend their time on things like writing love letters to comediens but

i see my generation being better.

we are a beginning of a something

and that something becomes a some more things and some more things

become somedays and the somedays become better days

so long as we keep pushing and going and changing and working

and fighting and if

all i can do is make you laugh

i'm gonna make you laugh forward and up and onward

i'm gonna make each bit of star dust you and me are shine and glimmer and spark

and that spark can start a fire

and that fire can burn down what is old and make room for new growth

 

but this generation can't do that

without the last generation giving us hope that we can.

so jon stewart, even if things never work out between us,

thank you for inspiring me. and being a gorgeous man.