In the Breath

The desperation in my desire to change for the sake of change

Is frightening

Just another layer of depression

The numbing

The deadening of facing the silence

To argue with my mind once more as if God

Has anything to do with conversation

Tears in shower stalls of shampoo and body wash

The glob on the rag to get the blob out the bottle

Bacteria off the skin and dead strands from the scalp

Dive in another book to live the worlds of dead authors

Knowing at least I have the libraries

If nothing else I can spend the next fifty years reading

Deadening my heart to slip existential when the crunch comes

The limp and the huff, the gush of blood to the cheeks

Wanting again and the hell always begins with the wanting

Depression is not the best, but it has its benefits

Don’t take away a man’s crutch unless you have something to replace it with

Fuck pills and chemical trick; I would rather my mind wade in the bog

Then give God the pass

I want to know as sure as possible press the pedal to the floor

In the search and only in the suffering can the forge grow hot enough

To bend a man’s soul, pound the orange-blackness upon the anvil

Metalwork not weapon, but poetry of speaking God’s name silently in the breath

The huff like the ancients inhale, exhale, ah, eh , uh, fffhh, Yahweh

I am who am; breath the beginning of holding dearness

This vessel like a sailing ship has volition like a mast in the moment

Breathing until taken to a divergent plane

Hoping that the nothing is not the everything

This is not the answer; this is not the answer; this is not the answer

But somewhere in the silence behind all of man’s attempts is a winding path

Where the measure behind the breath of all the breathers resides

So it is days numb me up; to survive to get by because wanting a helpmate

Has left shrapnel-laced busted guts and a cuckolded chest

Burrowing is all I got underneath the words for now because I’ll never find an answer

Don’t need one; just to know the road goes, goes somewhere, with and beyond the breath