Mortality visited me
Bringing with him
A box which
Contained my tribulations
Inside I found
My years of
Carelessness and frivolity
Snapshots of drunken
Wanton and dangerous
Behaviors gluttony and
Prideful arrogance men
Discarded as phone
Numbers and unkept
Promises to meet
I asked him
What are these
He quietly replied
These are your
Organs if they
Could talk saying
That they’re tired
Of supporting your
Evil ways Oh
So now Now
He said change
To live or
Die a fools
Death and then
He was gone
I have been
Rebuilt even better
After a lifetime
Of heartbreak God
Presented a miracle
He refashioned my
Heart to be
Made of rubber
Able to withstand
The pummeling and
Pounding of those
Without hearts hell
Bent on making
Those that do
As cold as
Them but not
Me their hammers
Merely bounce back
To them echoing
You cannot hurt
Me any longer
And right then
When you thought
Just maybe that
What you felt
Might be true
Who ever it
Is and so
You changed accepted
Redacted and ignored
All bells and
Whistles warning you
To be careful
Running and jumping
Off the pier
Fear behind you
Until you hit
The icy cold
Bold frozen water
Realizing too late
That chilly people
Cripple warm hearts
When I give
You my heart
I will also
Give you a
Hammer if you
Cannot break it
Have it you
Simply will not
I stopped living My Miracle of Life seven months ago when
incantations permitted a glimpse beneath a crust delicate
as early winter’s creeping ice across a pond; peering
deep and deeper still to the depth’s of the mind‘s
deep sea trenches only to chance upon a ghostly image, curdled,
it confirmed a tiny grid lock whose ID hid 48 hours;
the mind’s fluid sidesteps this log jam and a storm
surge barged into priceless brain tissue causing
a breaker to trip in this prevailing mild
and coherent character. The surge retired
dragging its bounty of fifty-eight years, a lifetime
of pleasure, reticence, failure, and small, immortalized
moments of glory into an abyss oft named forgotten. I stopped
dreaming stopped
imagining, stopped
unreasonable and half-wit ideas,
to jump start thinking which held me tight
like a kite caught in a gale and drew me in
lest I be lost to my mind’s struggle of fantasy
against a world of Conventional Wisdom; Wisdom
burdened by pragmatism, a reality of dead-ends, of
darkness, of emptiness, of fear, of inescapability, of
an absent place holding no bearing but a place nonetheless,
void of dreams, man’s anathema,
death.
If imagination is my Miracle of Life,
I must first domesticate my culture’s greatest
fear: an early death forfeiting decades of dreams
and desires.
HARLAN DIDRICKSON 