Leaving Home

Leaving streets

I’ve walked

so.

many.

times.

 .

Leaving the town,

this Eugene. This spot

in time and space. My spot.

 .

With its stardust streets

and ramshackle ideologies.

 .

Where homelessness meets

the other side of brokenness.

 .

Where people rise up

and check out, break down

and ascend.

 .

Many sanguine nights

spent in this space

 .

eventually splintered

by the teary-eyed dawn.

 .

Rays of love, frustration

permeating these potholed streets,

 .

melting the events

of broken days.

 .

Everything swirls

with changing paths

compass shattered

on the ground.

There is no way out

 .

of this maze, of this

surrealism.

 .

Sometimes change

is like this.

 .

Sometimes bosses

quit you.

 .

Loved ones

leave you.

 .

Your health

betrays you.

 .

Sometimes people

crucify you.

 .

On a proverbial cross,

where your only crown

is one of thorns and you look

for help but can’t place

the origin or the possibility

of such a concept.

 .

Vision turns red,

from beauty, from sadness,

from the proverbial blood blurring

in your gaze.

 .

Everything swirls

with changing paths

compass shattered

on the ground

there is no way out.

 .

Then new life bleeds

into this universe,

 .

like a thorny

rose, quick to cut

with beauty and daring

with no care for timeliness,

or even time itself. Such hope!

 .

Everything swirls

with changing paths

compass shattered

on the ground

there is no way out.

 .

Sometimes opportunity quits you.

The rogues

of this stony society

take aim at you.

 .

The arrows of negation

and broken dreams stalk you.

There is nothing here

to clear this mess.

 .

Then new life bleeds

into this universe,

 .

everything swirls

with changing paths

compass shattered

on the ground

there is no way out.

 .

Sometimes what we have

is a song,

a dream, a poem,

a promise. For something

on the other side of lonely.

. 

Words of wisdom

from wise ones

who’ve been broken

before

caress my bleary eyed

consciousness

 .

until I find

my sea legs once

again.

 .

Because to break an object

or a person

is not to destroy it.

 .

Sometimes brokenness is the prerequisite

to being made into a new whole.

 .

Yesterday was an illusion

to bleed you,

tomorrow is confusion

you do not need,

and we are baptized

into the present,

 .

the stillness of now, of being

the new man. A new man,

 .

crucified, baptized,

born again.