"The Midst of Mess"
I don’t want easy golden paths that glitter.
I don’t want planned sidewalks, safe, rich, white—waiting colorful child chalking.
I don’t want freeways nor slick, point-to-point meanderings.
I don’t want open roads to places of public renown.
I don’t want the straight route, the sure way, the solid line shooting forth,
I don’t want destinations marked by a world peculiarly out-of-step.
I don’t want perfect directions from mapquest.
I don’t want ancient formulas.
I don’t want a convenient savior scripted from dark boxes of shame.
I don’t want the self I borrowed from mirrors laced with fear.
I don’t want an intent that is afraid of shattering those mirrors.
I don’t want me shaped by judgments I have not yet been able to dodge.
I don’t want to own the broken self who shapes me if I default into facile unawareness.
I don’t want to stop vacillating on all I don’t want.
I want nothing certain.
I want nothing tried and true.
I want no package, form nor way that is convenient, sweet.
I want no thing, behavior or substance that takes away quick hungers, but leaves me wholly empty in the end.
I want only the things that I cannot reach.
I want the experience that is lightning fast, that is just outside my first embrace.
I want to throw away the past.
I want a future with teeth, a song I alone can sing—
I want a hard-fought anthem: self-forgiveness.
I want my arms stetched around all of me, each new day, in tiny, specific loving acts.
I want freedom, doing the next right choice.
I want to surrender to life’s brutal interruptions.
I want a fresh-moment, in-the-raw, mud-puddle shock.
Step, swoosh, soak, swoosh … more soaking:
I want much; I know little.
This is the little I know:
Magic lives in the midst of mess, and the mess has an order all its own.
