You grow weary. You grow weak -- that's ok.
Drop shaking legs to knee to pray.
To whom, or to what, should you pray?
Grace to your fear, four in hand
frothing before you and driven here
Smoke offerings to your rage and wrath
To smite is divine, most divine.
What can you burn, incensed?
Your pain -- a mantra chanted --
goes two ways, burnt away or fetisized.
Rise like cedar, rise like tides, rise like distant smoke
Rise refreshed with sharp white teeth rebuking.
With shoulders wide, unyoked the past.
This has gotten out of hand.
Wear your heart in your fists fragile and kind.
You grow open and strong. You rise like quick pulse,
like tectonic shift shake casting off.
Like a switchblade you wield your sharp mind.
You straddle canyons deep, long and wide.
Wear our good weakness like a shield.
Where is wisdom? You are wisdom bound.
Wear your heart in your fists, hard beating and quick
She was an indifferent rain. Too cold for naked running in, or it could have been I was the coward. We all have pain, but she was best at bringing it to bed. I passed that place the other day. It's pretty now, not like before. I've told too many lies for her. It was a thing that has an end, an end already back that way. The ground is dry already. It is a thing you sober miss like whiskey slipping darknesses. There is a feeling free that wants to be constrained, like pulling slowly from a bucket, a length of iron chain. When I am gone, she told me, know that I will not be. Goddam, not she's a liar too. She's gone, she's gone. Not in the waitress smile, nor in the grass, nor in the trees; I have no hope she smiles down at me and she dries too soon from memory. She had to go she had to leave and I, here, am the coward. We all have pain, but she was best at bringing it to bed. She took me in, she held me down, she pressed me into her singing cries. She was better than the coward me, and braver too. She had to leave away like dry lightening.
