Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Permission Granted
David Allen Sullivan

You do not have to choose the bruised peach
or misshapen pepper others pass over.
You don't have to bury
your grandmother's keys underneath
her camellia bush as the will states.

You don't need to write a poem about
your grandfather coughing up his lung
into that plastic tube—the machine's wheezing
almost masking the kvetching sisters
in their Brooklyn kitchen.

You can let the crows amaze your son
without your translation of their cries.
You can lie so long under this
summer shower your imprint
will be left when you rise.

You can be stupid and simple as a heifer.
Cook plum and apple turnovers in the nude.
Revel in the flight of birds without
dreaming of flight. Remember the taste of
raw dough in your mouth as you edged a pie.

Feel the skin on things vibrate. Attune
yourself. Close your eyes. Hum.
Each beat of the world's pulse demands
only that you feel it. No thoughts.
Just the single syllable: Yes ...

Sometimes the desire to NOT choose the more practical items or the less expensive things is so strong within me. Sometimes I feel the urge to dress in heels and silk and simply trip around the world without stopping to think, "oh. Can I afford this?" The fact is though, life takes from you. The deer in the woods don't think about debt or the state of the economy. They are worried about when that damn mountain lion catches them having a sunlit nap. They are concerned that while the weather seems to be holding out, how long will it last? Life just takes, without any kind of discrimination, really. It just takes. We cannot hope to understand the way it happens. But we can hope, we can revel, we can dream. Those things make us different. They make us unique. Our meatsacks really aren't that amazing. It's our ability to be creative with them that makes us so different. My ability to create is unique to me, and if I do nothing with it, that's ok, too. Yes...

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