You know you want to … but can you?
You say you will … but you don’t
or you try and try … then walk away
and tell yourself tomorrow – tomorrow’s the day
But your clock is moving backward
On its own tomorrow doesn’t come
and those voices mulling on a slow boil
pleading in you won’t fade
and if they ever do a part of you
will have died …
Now … excavate the useless parts
Break down the hardpan that stonewalls a long-felt truth
Drain off the sloppy quicksand of old regrets
Excise your stubborn malignancies and surrounding puss
Slip past the masquerade of jealousies
and welcome home your own weathered face
Go down on your knees
and crawl into the world’s own wound
Hear those other voices — the lonely hungry naked battered —
variations of a chorus with a common refrain
their long-strained dissonances more and more refined
Train your voice to sing through pain
Join their work in breaking rock in that deep mine
opening one by one the darkest questions
to unearth their luminous germinal gemstones
the upper light can never quite comprehend
and you are all down here passing them around
hand-to-hand — your faces fired in bronze
— Eugene Marckx
(eugenemarckx@hotmail.com)