Christmas Poem

I don't have to hear sandals crunch
on Jerusalem gravel to have hope
that there is something
more than this

this feeble life I live between lines
and times I don't understand in a land
that doesn't love me anymore
than I love it

and yet I am not miserable here in my
Christmas solitude alone
with my thoughts of all I've
known in my time

the notion of love moves and flickers like
a dancer fading in and out of a spot of light
on the corner of a stage where
the grand drama plays out

I need to find some magic in this night
but I find only a handful of ashes
from the past I've left burned
in my dangerous wake

I'm not happy with myself and yet I'm
not all the sad either for I've
searched the mother road for the truth even
if I never found it

I've walked between the alleys where the shoe
sounds rang like leather bells on brick
and the sky sliced down in rainbows of blue
and black to shadowed ground

I've rolled on long blue swells across the
bow of the earth while fluorescent specks burned
the ocean night and stars swarmed from
all corners of heaven

I've walked into the smoke of my breath in
Buddha nights with the smell of pushcart
charcoal in my nose and the song of ancient
history ringing in my heart

I've smiled across screaming bars in mad Saturday
night America with the taste of a woman
on my lips and vague notions of subtle splendor boring
into the right side of my brain

I don't need money or fame or adulation
I don't want to be more than Jesus on a day
that belongs to the ages
I just want to know what is before

what is

ain't


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