End of the Year Poem

The grainy distance between what is light and what is solid, opaque: an obstacle to a dead end. If thine hand offends thee, than thou shalt cut it off. Remove all impedances to the kingdom of heaven.
*But not that…no no, not that, for that is the key to paradise!

God damn god damn gad doom, these tiny little ticks that tell a turning fancy tune but never nod to more than anything we conceptualize by noon. Ha Ha Ha!

I can’t say it. It’s bursting through my legs, shuddering my muscles, shake shake shake and baking me eyewise, but I can’t say it! I feel it quivering through my veins and can screen it through ten thousand contrasts and tiny petty turns that are dwarfed to tiny daffodils as eyes rise up to an atmosphere with too much oxygen to passably breathe.

Inspiration this snowy night, glowing with the hoary host. Not words but a glimmer in the eye, a jump through conclusions, a leap of faithless faith – telling you the whole story conformed by yr worst fears. Fear not, my love, fear not…there’s more to the story than that. There’s more than I could ever begin to tell you so please just wait until we meet again and you can read it all for yrself in the post of my eyes. Why let ourselves be burdened by these details which float down and away with every bank of the wake. Rise up, my lovely little child, rise up and let the strings carry you through branches across the wind. Let the sun remind you about a hotly beating heart. Let the catastrophe of rain wash yr sins from you, yr worries, yr self-abdication and remember that the last man has no place on this earth because we have not yet reached the last page.

Grow! Grow! Tell me yr fears and fear for the telling because it’s…how small it’s all. Rise to the occasion – sling me with mud and vipers, sling the poison of the pits of the earth and still I will grin (and you know I’m not talking about me – as in the author me - but as in me), still I will ride the crest of the waves and float through it, through lashing glass and folded steel. Still I float and feel and fall and crack like an egg and jump to my feet dancing to the tune of the santuri and as the astrological wind chimes whisper prophesies and destinies, I turn my head and plug my ears because today is not yet the last day.

I may sit here incubated, cloaked in from the cold and desperation of a winter’s night, but I feel it all. I feel it running animation of my veins and I have so much to tell you, so much to scream through the bricks of yr eyes, so much to howl to my angel-headed hipsters and remind them of what was once forgot but reimagined one Brooklyn night with a back massage from two gentle lovers that made you come to yr senses before we caught you on the roof like a tiny tiny flake of snow.

This is to you, secret hero of these poems, and soft and lonely lover of my dreams. This is to you you vain and fickle son of a bitch that must come crawling out of the despicable mire with an apology and a flask of whiskey and you choken-eyed whore with too much you on yr mind. This is to all of you. This is to the future of the world echoed in every mummified moan croaked of days long laid to rest. This is to the ocean and to the stars, to the feelings that only one observation, one condescension, one re-enactment, one solitary memento will re-invigor, re-ignite. But not in the way you imagine. All of our imaginations are too small for that. Too small for to wake and stretch, to take a breath…and let the severed finger that dost offend the entry to heaven tell its tale…to let it all speak for itself.

This is not a cautionary tale. This is not a chiding or a sermon. This is an ejaculation, brought forth from the only lonely mode I’ve ever known. This is from the feeling of the real and the reel shine that projects me forward to the only focus worth fighting for. This is to the battle of life and death and if that strikes you as a little too grandiose, it is the epic battle between smiles and frowns upon a furrowed face, lost in thought.

As all forsaken say someday I’ll find you I would pray, but in this case that remains unknown, unneeded, unnecessary, and most of all, unwise. Unwind yr way from the slings and arrows of self-induced martyrdom and the aggrandizing impulse to conversion and remember the touch of an honest hand: the hand that held so much love as the smoke rippled outward and it remembered where yr family was. Remember and dream and open yr eyes to see sickness.

You want to change the world? Change yrself.

You want to heal the world? Heal yrself.

Remember where the herald sings, remember where the heart is. Remember all those fiery things, remember why we started this.

We have not yet reached the last page, but layers and layers of skins have been and will continue to be shed. Remember yr ablutions and multiplication tables, and never lose faith in the heart.