Down

Sometimes I write it as well as I'm capable. I am a prophet, if at all, of alienation. Should I apologize for this? I cannot expect to be understood, in either my execution or my intention. Should I surrender, for this? I have not stood this long, to fall. I am a poet of brokenness. I can't help it. I wish it were otherwise. But I've never tried to pretend.

What did you think I meant? I've said it before. Anyone who understands my meaning knows that the only reply is silence. They'll know the details are different for themselves, but the substance is the same:

Sometimes my hands grow heavy and stiff, and drag on the ground behind me, bending my back curved as old mountains. Sometimes I stare through a haze of pain out of a face like a stone mask. Sometimes darkness leaks from my lungs and puddles at my feet and rises like surf into a sinking vessel, and words cannot contain the cold I would feel, if I could feel. Sometimes I fall into the hollowness that displaces my organs and the receding cavern of my skull expands away in every direction so fast that even vacuum hasn't time to fill it.

Sometimes God is so far away he can hardly see me, and I can't see him at all.

I know there are miracles. I know that somewhere in the boundless universe there is a flawless mosaic of unspeakable beauty. I know that somewhere there is a balm that will soothe every ache, and a hand that will wipe away every tear, and that the wretchedness that suffuses some man's heart need not last forever. Somewhere weariness will end in fulfillment, and darkness will represent a time of peace and satisfaction. Someday I will settle into ease and happiness, the way a mountain slides into the sea.

I will be disliked for being what I am. That's how it is with all of us. I think of the race horse. Powerful and fragile. Bred according to a design, and unsuited for the wild fields. I think of a thousand ways of punishment and control -- banishment and evisceration and castration. I think of Samson, blind. I think of Jonah, down, down, down, down, down. I think of Macduff and his pretty chickens. I think of myself.

Have I said it before? -- that I'd be dead now if I hadn't started running? I'd have found a way. Something noble of course ... that's just how I am, so very noble. Nobility -- it is my curse. Who is there as noble as me? Not possible to exceed my nobleness, that's what I say. Saving a little flop-eared puppy from a burning building maybe. Something like that. I'd have a good excuse. God would never know. 'Oh Jack!' -- He'd say. 'You tried to save that little floppy eared puppy from that burning building! Well done, good and faithful servant!' And in my secret heart I would finally breathe easy. My really secret heart, that even God doesn't know about. Just you.

I think of you.


J