XII.
“If the choice were given”
If the choice were given
would I remain human?
What does glory get anyone?
We all stand beneath the great sun.
Can there finally be
an unyielding division between
what is evil and what is good?
Where has my mind gone?
A winter of rain. The city’s pleasure.
The bushes outside my window
look greener
and the moonlight blows in.
I feel my exhaustion
I feel the torturous press
of flesh
until I cannot think to resist—
this was existence
for as long as I remember
So what if I deserved
a long life or peaceful respite?
A way to shield myself from the bright
memory of his awesomeness?
That is the question
How difficult it is to tell myself
I only must live my life
on a maybe infinite stage
handing out words like a pledge
I am no prophet
nor actor nor poet
My tilling of the soil
has become compulsive
and I haven’t understood a thing,
all this time spent with words, wasteful,
a nothing
I thought language was supposed
to save my life.
Like remembering so much light
my confusion
is become wisdom
This ancient beauty
it isn’t lost on me
I want to loose it back to its first form—
that which wings with ease over
the earth
Out of words
no worth
save the plague I expel
Father, this hell
you passed to me will be no longer
Long I live the singer
takes up my hand
leads me to a land
of promised salvation
It’s golden
miraculous like an act of creation
and I leave behind my useless question
…
Andrew Tye is from a town named Temple. He believes all humans are poets. He performs his forthcoming book My Son as a one-man show in NYC. He aims to share the book and the show with national audiences.