AFTER FALTER, BEFORE CORRECTION

d'Verse Poets Pub--Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

Holidays are the enemy--they mark the passing of the years. 
This time you've defied the bastards
by sleeping straight through midnight on New Years Eve.

The runaway train of time keeps gaining speed--
summer...fall...winter...spring
summer fall winter spring
summerfallwinterspring
seasons never pausing
only waving like excited tourists passing through.

Most of the time, sleep comes grudgingly.
You lie in bed and think about old lovers,
inspecting the shards of shattered dreams.
One in particular keeps coming back.
A dusky young girl who said: I don't want to sleep with you
because I'm afraid I will fall in love with you. 
Ever the reassuring one, you replied: No you won't.

After falter, before correction
is the moment of truth
when a man must admit
that he's turned his life to shit
before setting about the business
of rising from the mire.

While driving to work you pass a service station
where a man in camouflage fatigues
wields the gas pump nozzle
as if it were a weapon.
Or a phallus. 
The car in front of you sports a bumper sticker
that says: Never deprive someone of hope--
it may be the only thing they have left.

After falter...before correction. 
The man who seeks to make connection
discovers that the days of infinite possibility are gone--
but only because a world turned deaf and blind has deemed it so.
The ego, in its fatal attraction to the body, must always lose. 
. 
The poet with too much time to think
teeters on the brink
of disaster.

Sleep comes reluctantly,
but sometimes,
in that kaleidoscopic moment between
consciousness and dream
an apparition in white appears. 
A lovely vision
in her gossamer gown
through which the mounds 
of her breasts are clearly visible.

She reveals  herself as Aphrodite, no less
(who sometimes intervenes on behalf of mere mortals)
and her first appearance ends abruptly
when you find yourself oafishly
reaching for those twin globes.
(Not the first woman you've known
to retreat under like circumstances.)

But she returns the following eve
and on your best behavior
you listen intently to all she has to say--
resolving to pass it along
to anyone who will listen.

She says that every day is a clean slate,
waiting for the touch of the master.
And if you've ever doubted that
you create the world
lie in any meadow and check out the sky.
The elephant in the clouds does not exist without you.

Let your mind become the wind
and it will carry you as far as you want to go. 
And if you don't look at everyone you meet and see yourself,
then you've got a cheapass mirror
you bought at Woolworth's on the day
they turned the freedom riders away,

Laugh like a madman.
You are, you know.

Ask forgiveness like someone who has hurt
everyone he ever loved.
You are, you know.

Fight like that hero
who will stand for what's right.
You are, you know.

Dance the dance of a lover
who is drunk with dreams.
You are, you know. 

Pray that you may have one more day
and possess the clarity of mind to use it well.

Understand that living doesn't happen to you
but that you ARE the living.

Trust in the innate goodness of the universe
for if life is indeed a joke
then we will all share it someday
just as we are doing it now
with our poker faces--
too practiced in the art to let on.

The flame of youthful desire burns undiminished,
even as the seasons grow cold.

The child never dies...
he lives inside the heart of the 90 year-old
just as surely as darkness affirms the sunrise.

As certain as winter implies spring.