Accept a ticking malignancy behind all things.
Accept that you will clutch in your arms
at least one too precious life
exploded for untimely confession.
Accept disappointment, the sheer face you battle,
the mountaintop revealing only cloud.
Expect delay, reversals, wrong choices.
Expect to leave your skull, dispute your being,
cry a pool in which to see yourself.
Admit to the labels you have chosen,
the ether of words you breathe.
See how they have braided soft convictions hard.
Delusion fashions its skin about the maimed
circuits, the wilderness of twitching wire,
the greypink flower of concentric flesh,
igniting old portraits in the mirror.
The balance of life is preparation:
editing refusals, resolving unspoken desires,
trolling for unscheduled joys.
With each survival, death begins again.