* Click here for a video of this poem in performance *
Someday, someone’s going to tell you that your mother was a crazy bitch.
If
they don’t, then forget all I’ve ever taught you, and remember this instead.
I
hope you don’t survive.
I’m
not about raising survivors. There are better things to be, things that could
kill you.
You,
girls. Be those things.
Be
the things riots are made of.
Be
the brandishers of beautifully violent words.
Be
the razor-tongued evangelists of giving a shit.
Be
the dogged lost-soul lovers falling on the sword of silent faith.
Be
the teary-eyed cheek turners stinging with weaponized submission.
Be
the askers of inappropriate, inconceivable, impious, incisive, incendiary
questions.
Be
the truth yellers unleashing hope and hell upon the half-turned back of a
justice too convenient to be right.
Be
the terrifying hallucinations of the sedate mainlining money from atop their
plastic heaps.
Be
the unblushing painters of ecstasies so holy they make God weep for his skin
again.
Be
the intrepid explorers of anatomies.
Be
the challengers of always-beens, never-haves, ought-nots, wouldn’t-dares, and
all the other hyphenates of unacceptable realities.
Be
the everlong believers in the wonders you, you, you yourselves create.
Be
your own fucking muses.
You,
girls. Don’t you dare survive.
Be.
If
you manage that, things will happen to you.
One
day you will look to the sky for answers and find only clouds and contrails.
One
day you’ll see God watching you from across a table strewn with cigarette butts
and ideas.
One
day your heart will starve for pain and your mind won’t be able to make sense
of that.
One
day mania will chase you into the public square, where people will laugh at you
wet and dancing with your grief.
One
day you will howl exulting in the improbability of stars.
One
day you’ll find clarity in your own naked reflection, topsy turvy bulging in
the drop of water hanging from the faucet.
One
day someone will return your gaze with such intensity that your chest will
reverberate with the aftershocks of your moments colliding.
One
day your lover will fan your flames with one hand and scatter your ashes with
the other.
One
day a friendly room will fall to whispers as you wolfishly slink along the wall,
guilty blood on your lips.
One
day you will wonder whether your hands will ever stop shaking.
One
day you’ll find peace in a company of a family you’ve chosen, lit with laughter
and firelight and booze, your 2am philosophies rising to the heavens in the
snaking incense of grease and charcoal.
One
day you will fail so thoroughly that even the cars passing you on the highway
will seem to belch out accusations against you.
One
day a child will look at you with love, and you will work your ass off to be worthy
of it.
One
day you will wake at 3am struck blind with panic over the unlivability of the hours
whose shadows stretch like caverns on the floor.
One
day you’ll realize you’ve been counting your days backwards to the origin of an
ache you thought you were trying to release.
One
day you’ll call your emotional 911 so you can hear a human voice read the phone
book to distract you from your vertigo.
One
day you will inflict irreparable damage on something that once brought you joy,
and the price of the penance you set for yourself will be far higher than you
can afford.
These
things will happen if you’re lucky.
You
won’t survive them, darlings – not even the lovely ones. See, the beauty of
being is just as insufferable as the pain, if you look it full in the face.
You’ll
be demolished, reduced to a dust so fine that the wind will have carried half
of you away before you can stretch out your palms to catch it. And you’ll
mourn, my loves. You’ll miss what you were.
But
after a while you’ll look down with your beautiful red-rimmed eyes at the tiny
piles of your remains, and you’ll think about what you’d like to Be next.
You’ll
spit into your impossible hands.
You’ll
rub your dust into paste, you glorious I-Once-Was, you fierce and grateful offerings,
and
you’ll start fucking building.
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