Time to Give Back, Give Back

Hi, My Name Is:

Swing me back up again. Bring me back something true. Or if not completely true, give me a good story. I keep writing what I want, what is loved, what misses me and how much I miss. Hemmingway wrote: “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

There are two kinds of artists. But only one will do. Will do. Only the writer who duels with himself, drools dreams of joy or otherwise drab crabgrass growing in the heartland of despair. The writer I want grows up, wakes with a belly of everything and nothingness, considers the weather, his cooling coffee, orange juice, the omelet like a swollen body to eat, even (and perhaps more so) enjoy. It’s a duty, a job, a consideration of life and afterlife. What for? What? What more? Where is this going?

I’ve learned enough to know I don’t know either. I know it’s July now. I know this letter I’m writing is being sent to a good place. A place with shared voices and a deep concern for connecting with each other through words. It’s clear we don’t have so long to live. This swelling concert of angels weep in falsetto. How beautiful they touch their faces.

And so I’m issuing this wild call to the canyon. Now is the time. Come out. Give me champagne, tubs of sewage, the kitten at the dumpster of what we leave behind, landfills layered with brown lettuce and how the light in an empty oil drum sings. Amputation, solace, grandeur, every one of God’s angels measuring the ounces of fallen sweat from our hair. Get out of the bones of the city and then the skin. Trying to understand the prayer. Singing anyway. Write the truest sentence you know. Singing. I’m going to keep believing. I’m going to keep believing. I’m going to keep believing.