"It's Gotta Go"
I. A single cracked neon flickers above the neighborhood laundromatâ coins tumble / clatter / shiver / clink like starlings startled into dusk in a whirlwind of murder; so much depends upon this brittle light still insisting yes, to exist is good.
II. I saw the republic of billboards screaming mercy along the interstateâ tall priests of plastic prophecy & their gospel of BUY / BURN / BURYâ and I howled my small name into the exhaustâcolored dawn, my chest a drum of bewildered blood. O madâeyed century! you wire electrodes to our dreams, pipe phantom wars through pocket screens, yet every trafficâlight pause or breath births a miracle: some daffodil bulldozed flat last week already unlatching green knives toward the sun. Tell me that isnât holy. Tell me the heart isnât a rogue generator spinning gold even while the grid goes down.
III. My father, Coca Cola sugar on his knuckles, says simply: âKid, lifeâs gotta go.â Not wisdom polished smooth, but a river stone from the Cedar heâs carried pocketâwarm fifty years, thumbed, believed.
So I follow the riverâ herons lifting like slow blue prayers, water scripting its silver sentences on the air. I kneel, drink, remember: the world is wounded & luminous, both.
IV. Listenâ the geese are stitching the torn sky back together, calling anyone still breathing to open the door, step outside, feel the wind write yes yes yes along the bones.
And we keep keeping onâ not because the night is gentle, but because somewhere a clover, four-leafed, splits the pavement, because the heart, faulty engine, still beats its red music, because even now our cracked neon human soul refuses to quit, throwing its fragile, strobing courage across the darkened nation we pledge our allegiance.
