I'll make you feel, you'll say this and that —
And beyond what you want —
God, you'll hate that you feel anything for me.
But I swear —
There I am, anyway.
Surviving is poetic. It takes the greatest despair, the most weighted frustration, the simplest loss of soul, the most fragile anger, the lowest revenge, the harshest betrayal of the mind and heart and manna, and from within this lowest in-articulation, comes a haunt of the spirit's rebellion, invigorating the largest eye — the only perception that matters — and in its opening, turning, swallowing, twinkling and blinking, begins and continues the largest, sweetest (sweetest, sweetest) effort to prevail.
To you, my friend, I offer: Prevail. Prevail, even as everything within you does not believe it can, or has any reason to. Be a survivor. Be poetic.
Prevail.
Prevail.
We must try beyond ourselves, beyond our own eye, mind and soul. We must try beyond all measure of what we believe may come to be, or what we believe we may achieve. As the quiet within our mind becomes foreign and elusive, we must press toward imagining its return. It may be long, alone hours, away from us. It may mock us, it may stretch us, and it may almost break us. We may take the long, dark of the long, along, carrying each step of our weighted pattern, very, very deliberately and scattered. We may not believe there is a way back into our quiet mind.
Look within your own wondering and know there is always something that they cannot take away. They, meaning anything that you hold within your mind that you believe may defeat you. I repeat: There is always something they cannot take away. It may be your memory (still, lost and strong, growing ever more beautiful in its last, specific refuge), it may be your pleading (I believe that any thought we carry is the brick of our next bed and home and hour), and it may be the place you can only know; you can only conjure; you: can only breath life into.
No one can take that something away.
If you cannot think of something they cannot take away — you have not tried hard enough. It is always there, it is always waiting for you to address it — as you carry it continually. It is of you, and beyond all measure of what you believe you may be. It is the slightest hello from a stranger when you need it; the last glimpse of a dying loved one, their hands, outstretched in dancing promises of long-awaite acceptance; it is your call, alone to gain entrance to, or to decline — as quickly — its essence of invitation.
Whether you acknowledge it or not, it survives within you. And as well, I know (even as I may not believe now): it survives within me, as me, as I survive. We are all more than we believe. We are ever expansive (either down or side, I find my soul has always come back to glancing strains of ever-fervent hope, hope — hope!).
I must repeat everything I've previously written into my own mind so that I will hold on. Almost everything within me wishes to give up. Beneath the almost everything, there is my basic body — clinging to its vital function: survival. It hears my mind, ranting, it is aware of every one of my singular, weighted obstacles. It reverberates my doubts and transforms them into the one-two-pattern of foot, step, breathe in, and breathe out.
Time is the new muscle and tissue we walk with: all of us. It isn't anything more than this — sometimes, getting through. There are piles of unused people on the street. (I am aware that there are used people, but I speak not of these; but of those not utilized, not realized, not seen by the vast majority of other, vital people.) Am I one of them now? Was there ever a time when I was not? It is said that anything can be looked back on and romanticized — given enough time. When does despair become romantic? When does hopelessness become tactile and appreciated?
What are we clinging to?
When all we have is the clinging itself?
The shadow of a whisper's memory?
Our virile, imaginative, stronger, limitless selves?
We watch: how we watch
as we transform into our own stranger.
This day is one, long comma. When I awoke, coffee was still asleep. It is raining, my fingers are part of the cold pen, and all I can think of is a woman who told me in tears that she didn't want it to warm up — because the shelter would throw them out then. The tears came from nowhere, and all I could do was sit quietly and nod, again and again. So impotent in my response, I might as well have been a shelter worker — throwing her out, or a parent — beating her — telling her — you! You! I never wanted to have you in the first place! I just couldn't afford the damn abortion — and to hell with letting my fucked-up parents take you in!
She tells me of foster homes and good jobs, lost jobs, and $400 she once found in the bathroom of a Denny's restaurant. She said, “It was just laying there! It was — I mean — I had only wanted to go to the bathroom because you know how hard it is to find a damn bathroom — and I get there — and it's there!”
Her eyes change when she talks about the $400. She becomes a little girl, dancing within a ballet recital; loving parents, giving her the first kiss of a warm bath and mild baby shampoo upon her head; the glint of eyelashes and stopped time as she is given her first, tender kiss. She becomes the walk of what all of us are leading to.
She becomes poetic survival.
