The Last 7 Months of My 5th Decade

I have no sense of age, though I have memories of events now history,

I have no lack of youth, no lack of spontaneous passion, desire, attachment, folly.

I am kinder, wiser, gentler, but sometimes just as cruel and unthinking as ever I was.

I can see the different levels of maturity within myself and others, and yet

they do not correspond to calendar years, but to upbringing, hardship,

apology and forgiveness: I still blunder about the world, as weak as ever I was,

I still rage about the world, as torn by tyranny and suffering

as when I fought for student rights in the shadows of the 60s,

when the apathy of the 70s could still be stirred

with reminders of what had nearly been accomplished, what was still possible.

I am no less sensual or sexual or political or emotional, but no more rational, though

I am more spiritual. I still believe there is a well of hope so deep in me

that if I ever found a way to unleash its waters the thirsting world

would know hope forever. My despair I only once discovered was an aquifer

running beneath humanity and into which I would vanish like a drop

if I ever fell in. I want revolution, revelation and the evolution of the species.

Long ago, I chose love instead of wisdom, chose my heart at the expense

of my mind, and left a wake of ruin as I staggered from care to care, passion to passion,

lust to lust, shared suffering to shared suffering, a holy fool of yearning,

in the wilderness of redemption songs, on the outskirts of a justly shattered religion,

dancing before the covenant arc of my life, drunk or sober, stoned or straight,

burning my life in the refining fire of human limitation, an argent dream

consuming the river of human suffering beneath our corrupt societies,

always seeking the distillation of myself into something useful,

a javelin to be flung into the heart of the beast

that ravages humanity,

when all the love and life and yearning is said and done.