Tabula Rasa

Listen to this shipwreck story and some will tell you we need to eat the dogs - they’ll play with straws to decide whether or not to eat the dead, whether or not to kill the living
What is the end of formality, of form, of love,
And so we are here in this valley together starving,

Everything I had was taken, destroyed, used up
In some way you could say everything I’ve ever been through has been the price I’ve paid for this moment
And still if I can get unstuck
I have to see I’m closer than I’ve ever been

The conditions are always perfect for the work I need to do on myself
So as I fashion this raft
As I send a scout over the ridge maybe to never return
As I wonder whether this rancid meal will give or take away from my becoming

Then all of that - all of the weatherworn threads of the past discarded cleanly
made into new blue jeans

To start anew
Can I trust you more after you’ve lied three times?
And why not - we have more honesty now than we ever did before

It’s a funny deal playing parkour like I used to - seeing if you can do something - getting back up again and again until it works - sometimes technique, sometimes, effort, sometimes something else, something deeper wanting, sometimes letting everything go and relaxing.
And then the never done comes to be and stays as if it always was
what is that? How impossible to grasp is that concept

And here I am, having failed and deciding right now in this moment if I will identify with the failure or the effort,
If I can acknowledge that I am smarter and more prepared than I ever was,
That I’ve learned in such a way much deeper than thought that hope itself is not a poor mans food,
It’s the rich textured luxury of learning through experience 

that somehow I trust myself to persevere