Sixty Minutes Is Far More Than an Hour

There is an existential worry,
A fear that runs deeper than the bone,
One that talks to you in the middle of the night in whispers,
Shouts,
Shrieks,
Rousing you from what fitful sleep you’ve stolen from the sandman,
With nothing more than one word… and maybe a few more,

Failure…
Not good enough…
Never enough no matter what…

Echoing the words I’ve heard so long I can’t remember the first time it was said,
You have to push on,
Press on,
Carry on,
Keep moving forward because the last few steps you’ve seen already and know –
More than the falling stars,
Higher than the mountain of debt,
Longer than there’s been fish in the ocean,
The next step has to,
Just fucking has to lead to the promised land you’ve been lied to about all your goddamn life,
And if it doesn’t you can count yourself lucky to be in that number that goes marching angrily,
Stoically,
Grimly,
Laughingly,
In…
As the saints bleed right there in front of you,
Their crimson life essence coloring the path that leads to another lousy day in the salt mines,
Another tear-watered way that ends only when you can’t enjoy what little of the
good life was ever within your grasp –

In the end,
It makes no difference whether you’re the guy on the t.v. or you yourself,
Sitting back and slapped into inspiration,
That inexorable movement toward the blank page upon which you must finally begin
to tell something that resembles the truth…
And just a little piece of that truth has something to do with how goddamn hard it is to get up every morning, when all you really want to do is die –
But that wouldn’t help, because you still have to pay the rent.

End.rev2 31 October 2010, 8.18 p.m., Brooklyn.

© David Mark Speer

Every Once in a While

End times come on fast,
Victory is a camp just like hope,
Eel-like, the oil slick undulates along the coast until it’s nothing more than a public t.v. special...

Right and left merge into a single, very special interest,
Yet we still ask all the wrong questions, still want the right and fast-acting answers, those
illusory, fleeting bits and pieces of insight…

Over a ravaged earth a half-dead god presides,
Never once blinking and ever convinced of his self-given right to stand in judgment,
Calling every slinking slug by its name,
the name he gave it by mistake, by drunken stumbling mistake,
Ending the name-calling in gibberish gabbled too easily for repetition…

Inimical concerns stand in uneasy relation to each other,
Never to reconcile and understanding only that singularly expressed fact…

Absolute stands the verdict upon our works,
the pronouncement ends no debate, lets the argument rage on…

While stiffly the bent-backed peasant walks forth to his patch of bluegrass,
Heather sways in the gentle, sun-kissed wind, somewhere, somehow,
Immeasurable distances get crossed in an instant –
so that I can take you in my arms,
not these arms, but better ones,
hold you close until we both are free,
Loving each other as completely as god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son,
Each the better for not understanding the maelstrom any better than we did before
any contemplation started.

End. Rev1 26 October 2010, 9.16 pm.
© David Mark Speer, Brooklyn