In a world going awry
everyday feels like the day
I could die
but I grasp just enough
to fill the moment
with a pregnant present
in between breaths
I never could make real art
so instead
I was the heartbreak
between child and woman
a sorrow more delicate in form
savage in nature I am the storm
self-destructive with purpose

I was never gifted
with elegant throes of passion
or popular taste in fashion
my container grown kindness
came up after the spasm of shock
awakened in climax
from a squashed seed of stillness
between beginnings or maybe
endings in between
torrid hormones and birthing dreams

I’m the imago
that never could fit
molded limits
hidden within the fragments
of a wax mask
that speaks for my face
straightjacket horrors
with names of others
all with my gaze
aghast with the blaze
bound to the mast
emerging from the blast
a task so daunting
I found the resolve
to heal into one space
no more charades
I split through the seeming
I seize the day

I am the committed grace
born of desperation
like the rock and roll saints
filled with piss and rage
with no shame
in being a different way
because the end comes
reaping anyway

I am an imperfect bodhisattva
and this living is what strips away
the dirt on my skin
you refer to as sin
the passing always
sanding and polishing
my edges reflecting
the lamp illuminating
my path reveals
the thread within

a string of dread wrapped
around my sorrow’s stamp
a secret deep inside my sacred fire
Indian blood flows from skulls and ghosts
of those who came before me
intimately I beg on my knees
pleading knuckle to bones
I echo so many mistakes
they made in fear
ancestral wounds repeat
everyday in every story
the struggle is our glory
and this mouth only takes
now to give more back
than it ever ate

ascending in the mire
means growing down
my roots thickening
into the inner smile
that never dies
like the conscious eye
that always wakes
even while asleep
it knows it knows
finding the fierce glow
everywhere everyday