Survival Tips
Become undocumented.
Trudge along a slimy riverbed canopied with moody clouds,
appreciate the beauty in the messy, the unpredictable.
Swallow a heart every once and a while. Run!
Make someone chase you this time to get their heart back.
When they are breathless and full of broken light,
Open your mouth and let it fly out like a yellow finch.
Prove through tenderness, you have been holding light for them.
Dance on the lawn of a courthouse, let the night tell you
The laws of mechanics, how to move your body. Let
There always be a little ache in your radio. Blues,
Jazz, pop, Americana, country, they were all infants
Once swaddled in that very ache, that very desire.
Learn the names in history, remind yourself none of them are yours-
Yet! Remember history is a man in a suit trying to calculate
The dimensions of the life he dwells in. Nothing more.
Let the words pour out of you, let them become the lullabies,
The winds carry across the weather of this imaginative universe.
Imagine yourself useless sometimes. When the path is blocked
By a large stone, someone is taking time to put lavender in your coffee.
They’re not ready for you yet because they want it to be perfect.
Offer up the simple prayer of going nowhere, nature will instruct from here.
Breathe in your own landscapes, sometimes let them overgrow,
Run through them when the grass is high enough to tickle your knees.
Laugh first through your mouth, then your eyes, then through
every pore that’s been kissed by sunlight. Build yourself cities,
Call them Jerusalem, Babylon, Bethlehem, let your saviors
Be born, crucified, and born again. Seek a new disaster,
Leave the dragon, the gun, the knife on the table.
The only tool you need is laughter and a pinch of forgiveness.
Raise your hand and use your stentorian voice for a while.
Trust silence as a way of speaking, remember weeds
Often get ignored as plants & flowers, who sometimes have a stronger voice.
Accept you can try to throw all you don’t want to own
Inside a muddied polluted river and eventually you will have
To throw yourself in too. You might want to just love all your trash,
So hopefully you can spare the river,
Recycling all your parts into something new and useful
That will feel like a baptism or rebirth,
Accept the nature of life is a juxtaposition of drawn straws,
Missed trains, rolled dice, and all the way
Your body receives the affections of chances.
