Redemption
This is what I want for traversing the crooked path
a chance at redemption
to lose the feeling that peace is an unavailable stranger
standing on some distant corner
to quit seeing the outlines, the shadows, the underneath, the hidden
lungs that breathe in-out-in-out instead of innnnnnn—oouuuuttt
to find the distant corner & the stranger
to make love to the stranger, face to face, his in-out breaths warming my neck,
until he becomes familiar and I am spent
one day, one year of carefree abandon
a silencing of all the divisive voices in my head
I’d like to lose the instinct, the desire to scream, to push ahead, to push away
I’d like to raise up the underclass, save the underdogs,
win a Nobel prize, a strict accounting, or sweet revenge
as I said, a chance for redemption.
But my words arrive too sharp and too faulty,
like an abstract theory or a chastised science.
Too raw, second rate, half-finished.
(And he remains a stranger / standing on some distant corner).
This is what I want for navigating the circumstance:
swift justice and tender mercies
to bestow a fortune of luck upon the unlucky
an untying of the knot that binds my hands
to open that heart-shaped Pandora’s box and find it mercifully empty
wanting for nothing more than locks and chains
& a place deep in the mantle of Earth
where it will melt into legend, a myth of Hades’ proportion
There’s some key around my neck, but I don’t mind.
The clink of decades past, or the rusted metal of prolonged strength.
I can be Atlas while watching the clock and waiting,
or maybe Atalantis, faltering, falling for the same old apple trick.
It depends on the story or the season.
JT Devin, 2007