Once More, Into The Light by James Diaz

Once More, Into The Light

My brother, my sister, my other
Doubled over in spirit on the kitchen floor tonight
Doing the math all wrong
East of wherever that sweet tree of life falls
Into the clear blue yonder
Once more, Into this light

Shake your fists, your barrel of worries out in the night
We’re all counting backwards from a deep dark wound,
that pounding beautiful hurt in your ears
Pain brain, come on now
Let it rain
Turn them numbers inward
Wreck and weep, muscle through the drywall
Say your prayers with a hammer
Once more, Into this life

Hold that line
Until the divine bites the hook
We’re eating mercy tonight
Shell the peas, husk the corn
Save some room for the reckoning
For tomorrow’s fuckery and pain
And all them who never known it as bad as we coming at us
With the numbers and the due dates
And don’t you know it won’t stop
And neither can you
Once more, Into that light

Go bright burning in your god tongue
Tell em this life sent you
And one two three
And you and me
Scraping hell’s bottom for whatever serves as star shine
In the deep abiding dark of us
Once more, into this light.

*

James Diaz is a poet/learner/listener/struggler still very much figuring it all out. Author of three full length collections, the most recent being Motel Prayers (Alien Buddha, 2022,) Diaz lives in upstate New York where they edit the intentional literary arts journal Anti-Heroin Chic.