It
is captured in the yellow leaves of a tree becoming.
It
is within
life’s infinite unfolding,
shifting, and morphing
steams and food carts,
car crashes and bomb blasts.
It
shines
in pretty girls and hopeful boys,
on beetle shells and satellites;
the leaves are overflowing
with It.
They are melting into stellar amber beads
of seconds
glimmering with the promise of our golden hours.
All you really have is this moment.
The great and terrible tomorrows
are phantoms.
This here is truth, this poem,
and your eyes scanning.
Behind the mountains, within the clouds,
between the alleys, beneath the clothes,
there is nothing.
Nothing is the only thing promised.
If you love,
love scorchingly.
If you hate,
hate like ice.
It is better to feel
the sting with achingly alive fingers.
The realest thing is this poem
and you,
miracles of the senses.
Before I die, I want
to do this one tiny thing—Before
I never again have the chance
to dream—Before
it’s over. Before this struggle ends—Before
it stops,
the carousel of life
with its horses and noises
and peoples and voices
and dirt deep in pores
and ashes scattered offshore—Before
I know conclusion—before I don’t.
Before blinking into a nothing sky
I’d like
this meager light of mine,
the faintest thing in that sleepless solitary night,
to burn completely and fully.
Maybe like this, the lonely
will have somewhere to rest their eyes,
and the broken
will have somewhere to hang their suffering.
There is a chill in the air
as the unearthed night
rises.
Crickets fill the empty space
within my heart with prayers.
I breath and exhale,
then watch each hope melt
into the unfolding blanket of suns.
A human being’s sorrow is small,
and the Cosmos is so bright.
No man can fill its spaces with his darkness.
The stars shine
undisturbed.