This Life is for Us, Dear, So Live


even with
the unloading and shrugging off
of twenty thousand things
or ten, or sixty,
--the pick is yours--
you are still damned.
there with the sweet release of
pounds, shedding from you slick
as sweat down the curvature of your spine,
you feel yourself born anew. blind
to the gift of your obvious magic, you
rise again and again from your ashes
and sin and deceit. the way a fire is fueled
through the passage of the night, you
are constantly rekindled by your own spirit.
you do not need anyone, no one
or nothing; there is nothing to calm you
from the quaking weight of your bones as they mash together
in kismet linking, vertebrae slung to the sleeve
of a cast: it is the mold of the you of the now, before and
foreverafter: i believed this because i too with my own eyes
never shaded nor misaligned hunched in the delicate
painting of your crooked back saw. however my vision
came as if the turning of a lens to bring the forefront to focus
i distinctively knew what was before me without the need
to sharpen, darling
i could see you forever without fault or fear of consequence-the
world is your soldering ground and what you reap you have sowed
for centuries. these are the pounds that have been shed:
they fling from you as the splash from water. could i any less be a liar if i knew the hard fist of my words? to know the damage they have assaulted on those who were beloved or unloved? god, do you judge me more leniently for saying with certainty i loved no one or a thing?
you rise eternally to the motion of the day: there is no meditation to reason
or a need to be; we will be. a lie is solid as any truth for it forms out of resonant emotion breathed to life by your heart.