I woke up an atheist today.
and it is definitely connected to the “Chakra Magic Lunar Calendar”
pinned by my kitchen window,
its daylights punched out with black x’s
marking the nights i’ve gone without stars.
The long beach sunsets are trying to help.
They are massaging my temples with their melted romance,
calming me down with the blood pressure medication
of their mellow collisions with the sky.
Thanks,
but i could really use some starlight.
The unadulterated kind.
The canopy of brash burning asterisks
illuminating the vast deep.
My back crashing its shares of gravity to the earth.
My entire field of vision a complex astronomy,
the universe glittering its jewelry,
my mouth hung open like a starving fish—
hooked—
breathing shallow in the cold damp midnight.
This is day 3,042 of my inner struggle with city life.
I am staring dreamily out the kitchen window,
watching sun light smelt
and sweat in the steam from a cup of tea.
I am picturing myself ranching,
if that’s even a verb.
Later, I will pause in the arched doorways of my 1920s apartment,
having just bruised my hip on broken bookshelves,
and fantasize about the sexy promise of open space,
like high school girls in farmhouses must fantasize
about being crushed in the wasted pulsing crowds at rock concerts.
This distance from “the land.”
it’s a sacrifice you make
however temporarily
to live huddled with the other artists and smart alecks.
To go months without being called a liberal hippie
by someone who says it like it’s a cancer in his mouth.
It’s a choice that makes itself for me
every time i am rescued by the warm clotted glow of art galleries,
by the imitation of Django Reinhardt that is really not that bad,
strumming rakishly out of the mood lit punk bar,
or the old David Bowie juke-boxing the punchy patrons
at the cheaper bar down the street.
In the absence of starlight
you start looking for the shine in everything:
the sparkle of fresh paved asphalt.
The glinting litter of crinkled candy wrappers.
The gold fillings in a smile so big you could live in it.
With no forest of trees for comparison,
the smallest signs of life are magic.
God refuses to be outdone by the metropolis.
When you are most homesick, inexplicably,
for some place you’ve never even lived,
an unexpected ocean breeze salts the heavy air,
stirring everything.
It says: your happiness will return to you
like the prodigal son,
having spent your inheritance of expectations extravagantly,
but ready now to do the work of joy.
Have faith.
The signs of life gather themselves in any darkness.
It’s a rebirth, a rebuilding, of what was never really destroyed.
In what is its own kind of starlight,
a thousand bright minds flicker on,
our imaginations like flashlights,
searching for a path.
blinking in the dark.
BB
