No Sides

Draw your five short breaths and pretend it’s meditation
To your showerhead higher power: ‘Gimme patience
Make me nobody’s robot, make me nobody’s slaughtered lamb
Deliver me from evil; open me as best you can.’

Play your cracked guitar for the Boston Occupation
Ditch your blindfold drift; aimed at aimless destinations
Watch the wakened assembly live principled, righteous lives
With your heartbeat through set cement: ‘Honored to be here, guys.’

See it’s a slow crawl
At a new wave
And if you feel small
Don’t, babe:
Whenever you’re alone, you’re not

You wait in line, cycling finished conversations
Straighten out the stories, edit out the faces
You’re lost in the file when the cashier catches your eye
Summon up a smile, come back to earth and mumble, ‘Hi, Hi, Hi’

And it’s connected
On a timeline
It’s a circle
No sides
At the same point where it starts, it stops

Out on the back lot you wanted for nothing
You sat with your hands full, the future was open:
A dreamt southwestern sky
A moon-drenched island night
A newborn day, awake and alive

Now it’s a nightclub
With a guest list
And uh-oh-
Bad news, kid:
Whoever’s getting in, we’re not
So let’s start up our own, just us
Where anything we need, anything we need
Anything we need we’ve got