People want to “make it.”
I just
want to find truth.
The quest may starve me
while others plant their roots
and their bellies grow full,
but what aches is not my stomach;
it’s a vacuous space within my chest.
Some call it the heart,
though what crackles—
crackles in a deeper depth—
is a space no one can point to,
yet everyone feels
when
cars stop and business
ends.
There,
in that still penumbra,
between stars and stone,
burns this silent shadow,
its kindling unknown.
Everybody wants to be your Jesus Christ
and kick over your tables,
telling you this ain’t it,
drop that drink,
smoke this joint,
write this way
through the Pearly Gates
and on to success.
But you gotta say fuck all that.
You ain’t religious,
and nothing is gospel,
not even poetry.
I fell, but then I was standing. How many falls have you taken? Really, how many? And you’re still here? Upright and alive? Notice that when a tree collapses it actually rises, it becomes a towering castle for chipmunks, a mountain peak for fungi, a floating planet for ants, and a universe for poets searching to transcend the gravity of their lives. Falling is a change of form, but not substance.
It can be a bad day,
a really terrible nasty day,
the kind of day where the sky is a blue bruise
and the air is a raking of nails…
It can be a bad day,
a truly unbearable day,
where gravity bulges into obesity
and shoulders slump and drag against ground…
It can be a bad day, but
all it takes is a single moment:
a word of buoyant gratitude,
a glacier smooth smile.
A bad day can remain a bad day—but
the shroud of clotted clouds
can been sundered by a blade of beaming luminance.
It can be a bad day,
but the eyes can still shine.