
Wake Up
Challenge yourself to come out
Of your small world of small pleasures,
The addictions that are not yours
(ask yourself why they are not)
That keep you numb to a larger umph.
Wake up.
The sky is falling
Again on your heart,
Like a bristly blanket
Over your shivering life that will
Make you itch from the inside out
Until you have scratched your way
To a gory demise equal to
The suffering in our oceans,
Our forests, our soils and rivers,
The people around the globe
Who are not free
To speak, to walk where they please,
To eat what you would throw out.
Challenge yourself to leave behind
Your small life of selfish love.
Feel the world.
Read the headlines
If only for a sober inkling of reality.
Let your heart break already!
Watch movies that challenge
The borders of your veins
Rather than feed the same bottomless void
Of flimsy substitutes for true sustenance
Which is finally to give your life away
When you have reached that point
Where the only reasonable thing
To do is to leap before looking
Into the pool of infinity
So that this only safety
Of unclutched, umplanned surrender
Can find you
Endlessly alive—
It’s true
Just do it.
Wake up
To the dream of yourself
In every living thing, the pulsing
Breathing, hurting world—
Everything—all of nature down
Through the winding arteries
To the core of the screaming Earth.
Let go the horror and the sin
Of your small circle of rewards.
You matter, if this confirmation
Is medicine at all to your apathy!
Fall in. Be carried.
Grab the trapeze. Let go.
Become the wind and rain
Of the perfect storm.
The big heart beneath
The surface awaits you—
Don’t die before you do.


