Know This

I know this.

I must prove I have suffered to receive compassion. That one cannot come without the other. Suffering. Becomes a new inner self. A worship of the dark places left where no candle can go. I am less of more. chiseled from clay.

Half my face is paralyzed.

Oh, they say, as if they all of a sudden comprehend what that means. I am restrained in the most human of all communications, expression. and so I write, trying to smile on paper, scowling in meter, grimacing with rhythm and tempo, I suffer a river worth of words.

and I want to go someplace, faraway, where I won’t be alone anymore, someplace secluded, without people. I lived here in this decrepit ovary of roses. But I am from Fish Creek, the Clackamas River, Agate Beach, Seal Rock, Painted Hills, Crown Point.

the water in its love, demand justice, document the sediment, the contaminates, the overview,  a video narrative of the entire aqua system. ecosystem breakdown. one drop of water from the top at Timothy lake, down streams, rivers, through dams, and to the sewage dump. Real. what is natural? why do children fear insects and animals and slugs. Jesus Christ it’s the real world, not the concrete hand-sanitizer fuck hole world these slimes are ravaging in.

So what If I am crazy? I think I am losing my mind. Or maybe I am just throwing out the parts I don’t need any more.  Like getting rid of old clothes that don’t fit any more. Ideas that didn’t pan out, opinions that got me nowhere, biases that were past their sell-by date, all gone. 

I swim in the Willamette. Not because I believe it is clean. But because if it dies, I should die too.