Grow a mirror, Pilgrim, and remember what you look like: a poem

Always explode out like a light

And cut out the false

The gossip, the habits of centuries

Direct the ascent with word

But first with deed

Learn to be wholehearted

Johnny will sag and sag

For the weakness of the ages lies with the easy

The easy with second hand

The second hand with out-of-touchness:

The feet broken, casted, and shriveled

Carried around, limp, here to there

The eyes watery, bagged, and dull

Careless billiard balls, homogenized sicknesses

Johnny is a dead end

Perhaps there is no way

But you shall not know coiled up

Sucking upon the second hand of centuries

The buildup of the easy

Honesty is to be your highest value

The sword of wholeheartedness

All of your being at hand

Into the tip of its blade

You do not know this

But your nature flourishes at this blade

Attack toward the source of your most basicness

That central thing you daydream of doing

Encountered again when hand to hand

The artist draws you out’

That you there under the fog

Toward that thing you were supposed to do

When time permitted

That thing you forgot

Yet it rushes to the surface

Fully enunciated, immaculate, daring

As you blink away the weariness

As you let your feet feel the wind or the water

Expecting easy flourishing

Is low vitality’s rut

Within those hazy doldrums

What we’ve come to call normal

Reality too far away to understand

Burdened, no breathing room

When you look out and cannot see

Here, you long for this and this alone

And long you will unequipped with a good mirror