Brian’sPoems

Journey of the Radical

If at some point in your life,
(as is true for me on this very morning)
you do not wake up alone,
whether quite literally without those relationships you’ve come to expect,
or rather so deeply connected, you are singularly overwhelmed.
Then it stands to reason you have not fully awoken.

My generation now comes to middle age
as all must
on bended knee,
wounded,
befuddled,
perhaps amused,
the men not crying,
the women not even crying,
scratching their heads.
thinking: we were promised jetpacks;
sighing: but we knew it was all bullshit.

My own fallen soul is so battered and cynical
it confines me to hell,
a solitary existence full of bad dreams,
memories returning with gifts of bitter resentment.

No matter what your what is,
none of us are condemned to a living death.

With love I acknowledge and let go of my wounds
day by day,
brick by brick,
so carefully, so laboriously deconstructing
the walls I have built around my being,
keeping from my soul the essential grace
which sets life free in its quest to join God.

Staring at the rocks in the desert
I glimpse eternity.
My own struggle,
our struggle is so important.
And yet it makes me chuckle.

Now, imagine standing on a beach
wave after wave unfolding.
That is you, me, our generation, our species, life:
endless waves.

Life ascends only insofar as it is necessary for us to fall.
It is easy to rejoice in the flesh.
We do this so effortlessly for which I am thankful.
But now is the time to join soul and flesh.
This is the journey of the radical.