I have kicked this particular pebble
down the hallway many times.
Too hard, (too late!) one moment
we came to blows, and it flew
a cruel catapult down
several scarred wooden steps
rumbling, tumbling, a bounce
bounce, lo! then a single orbit round
the basement drain.
There’s nowhere to go from here but UP
I breathed. Alas, for months
or is it years? there was naught but dust
and searing guilt – I will get to that
when there is time
to paint the steps, to
trace the circuitous grime,
when cobwebs and coins and virus
fall away to the soot of dusk.
There is value
in starting over, yes – salt
on my cheek, my eye
my heart.
_______________________________________________
How I got here
Two dozen months ago I came to the morbid realization that I am too old to have started a lifelong habit. My fledgeling scraps of poetry and writing were sweet but hardly consequential. That bothered me for a while and my adolescent all-or-nothing predisposition dug in its haughty little heels and guess what? I didn’t just stop taking the time to write, I couldn’t force myself to start again. Crazy, isn’t it?
Time continues to march forward and all I have done is consume and not create. What a foolish pursuit (or lack thereof), to give up writing purely for comparative reasons.
We are all familiar with the phrase “you are your own worst critic”. Although I know many folks that are much crueler than I, for the most part this phrase is true.
Fuck the critics.
Let’s do this.
A Minus B Plus 