riverbeds
all is ephemeral, wind be kind: bent down in child’s pose eyes glazed over and dripping sweat body pushing the punishment i’ve given it back out onto my skin for me to count the beads and streaks and give each a name, each a face, each a date and time and reason and feeling behind, each a step closer to my grave where surely many will dance and spit and maybe at least one will weep, though these days i doubt it, internalizing the prose of receivers and silent observers of my deeds and desires my name is a sentence in itself, a whole paragraph of misgivings and signatures laid by shadowed hands i’ve repeated “i’m different now” perhaps a dozen times and each was true but incomplete until i took three deep breaths and looked down at the broken earth pockmarked by four graves i dug - fell to my knees and broke down at the thought at what i’ve done (“terrible things to beautiful people” to quote myself, allow me to indulge), ran North and laid out all my cards into the fire and burned each one, then to Charleston to scrub the ashes and blood off my knuckles in the stinging salt seeping into my sores i’m as clean as a man can be, i’ve been a sinner by choice these 5 years, somehow thinking my dirty soul could never be anything but - “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalm 59:5) i have torn down palaces, dried wide riverbeds and felled great and beautiful redwoods in order to cobble together the wicked shack i now watch burn, O America, O Majestic America, forgive me,
i carried these and more, lipstick stains and collars soaked with tears i couldn’t sympathize with because i know what it’s like to love and wonder why just why(?) i carried these with me until i lost my balance and fell off my narrow pier, floating softly now down this stream, ears filled with water and the whispers of fish staring at the sun, let the current take them all, i am miles and a whole lifetime away from them i want to be myself 2011 and nothing else, this year has been good to me. i have defeated the ghost of my birthfather who died 20 years ago and whose name i will never know and whom will never have to hide his face after reading my muddy words, i have defeated my demons who (with little effort) convinced me to take hammers to paintings and vases and spraypaint stick figures on them. i carried these and now i carry a pack full of love letters signed and dated,
float with me down the Cooper River, smile and laugh at my mistakes and know that you weren’t one of them.
i carried these and more, lipstick stains and collars soaked with tears i couldn’t sympathize with because i know what it’s like to love and wonder why just why(?) i carried these with me until i lost my balance and fell off my narrow pier, floating softly now down this stream, ears filled with water and the whispers of fish staring at the sun, let the current take them all, i am miles and a whole lifetime away from them i want to be myself 2011 and nothing else, this year has been good to me. i have defeated the ghost of my birthfather who died 20 years ago and whose name i will never know and whom will never have to hide his face after reading my muddy words, i have defeated my demons who (with little effort) convinced me to take hammers to paintings and vases and spraypaint stick figures on them. i carried these and now i carry a pack full of love letters signed and dated,
float with me down the Cooper River, smile and laugh at my mistakes and know that you weren’t one of them.