Maybe it all belongs.
Not to say that
it’s all good, or
equal or needed
but rather
it’s all here.
The beauty,
the wonder.
The first kisses and
the late night comedy bits.
The maples in Vancouver
and the poppy seeds
in Pakistan.
The bass in Lake Peachtree (I kissed a girl there once)
and the salmon in Washington.
Those are good things.
And there is, too,
a ragged couch cushion laying along leaves and
grass on the rails of
an Amtrak.
Maybe the seat of someone
who caught that midnight train
looking for a lover.
Or maybe looking for
himself.
There’s an angry father,
blurting out epithets
and the shame of seven
generations on some waitress
whose Marlboro addiction
is the only thing saving her from the other shadow of a man
back at her duplex.
And you’ve got
the military industrial complex
and redlining
and gentrification
and californiacation
and oil changes
and changing a flat tire off I-5 in the winter of Seattle with rain dumping as if Elijah prayed for it.
And grandmas dying with nothing but the comfort of a 20 year old CPA.
And miscarriages.
And stories never told because the presumed judgement seems to outweigh the shame of a secret,
and babies abused and
trauma repeated and then
repeated.
Mass graves.
Bodies, stepped over on busy streets —
I roll my window up and pretend I didn’t see
you begging for change, or maybe dignity.
So there’s that, too.
The grief of my (our) own “so what” to the world.
A middle finger to the grief of whatever else is out there,
because, well, dammit
I’ve got my own grief, too.
How can we carry it?
It all belongs.
It’s not all good, much of it deserves
a “fuck off”
or a “to hell with this,”
The big and small deaths,
they need a kick.
But there is a place that was once
called hell,
and now it’s a garden.
I don’t know what that means
but I have a hunch it points to a
Reality greater than me and yet is in all things.
And yet not, because death is still a real
thing
and mortgages, too
and we all flame a fire so
I just hope the one I flame is love.
Or maybe Love flames me.
It all belongs, somehow.
Not because we need it all —
but because it’s all here.
And the irony is that
by staring death in the face
it begins to lose it’s grip.
By going to hell,
it becomes a garden.
I don’t know what it all means
and I know most of it
is pointless, an enemy.
But I remember a few words
that seem to matter
and of the three,
Love.
It's Tough, Dude 