Mantra For The Hard Times

It’s easy to lament.
Praise, instead.

Find a purpose to the day.
Praise, instead.

Lift your eyes. Raise the dead upon your shoulders.
Praise, instead.

If a cut is made, paint the gray trees with your blood.
Praise, instead.

The crow slips into your veins, cackles, and you die a little.
Praise, instead.

Flight into the desert, no water, no sign of shade.
Praise, instead.

You open a moth-haven billfold in the presence of a feast.
Praise, instead.

Love splits and draws away from your hard skin.
Praise, instead

the levers that move you,
the gears of your throbbing head,
the dinky children born from your fears,
the light of fires burning the spars of pirates,
the hats of soldiers riddled with flowers in the long battlefield grasses,
the red charlatan’s grin as he slops his hogs with your fortune,
the skulls of ancestors empty of expectations,
the diversion of hunger,
the urging and prodding of want;

all brought to you by the machine of living,
all slim and taut and combat tested,
all for you to contest and create from.

Praise, instead,
the pain of painful life.
Lamentation is not a wizardry
against the wave that comes for you;

praise, always praise instead
your remaining behind
as it recedes.