to say we were lost boys would be cliché
but clichés have ways
of cementing truths into language
like hard red suns that scorched West Philly & warm beers we guzzled ‘till we couldn’t walk straight & time went missing like a thief
who stole my innocence
& we packed into an old sedan on a road to nowhere &
perhaps, if time is not linear, this had to happen &
if free will is a myth, we had no choice in the matter,
merely swigging, smoking, fighting in adolescent wastelands
I know I was lost, but what about them? they that collaborated, buying psychadelic 7-11 mushrooms but too afraid to eat ‘em
wandering empty streets, ending up at train stations
you taking my car, we unsure of how we returned home
me – back in psych wards a week later
unable to see anything but pain &
too self-absorbed to realize the sheer enormity of pointless suffering
in Darwin’s evolutionary world, before I found God & abandoned Him like a jilted lover,
to spend twenty-four months in stupor, in a dark bedroom with
cigarettes for lunch
& enough books to last centuries
I think of this God not as I thought of Him before
as supernatural pinch-hitter,
but the ground of being
cells in my aging body
light in my lover’s smile
miracle of my niece
daffodils pushing out of wet soil & rising toward light
a stubborn way of saying all Creation is unbreakable
(Photo by Benjamin Grant on Unsplash)
