love i

"Do not go gentle into that good night..*." Do not burn out like a candle. Cry out like the molten furnace. Lie beside the lover like the volcanic flow from Pele''s womb to the foaming sea. Then you breathe. Not shallow like the grave, but deep, deep within the bowels drawn up through fisted thighs trembling at the coming firestorm. For god's sake dying is easy. Living hard, wild and unstoppable is what you were made for. Hard bones, defiant muscles, surging blood wait like an army eager to ravish the world. Do not accept the half, the almost, the maybe. Fight, goddamn-it, fight life with a love that cracks open the shell of the universe and spills out the infinite lust of creation. You are the surge of the cataclysmic ocean swell. You are the weight of gravity spinning the planets. You are the cosmic gasp and rage and embrace. Light bends to your love. Life aches to be your lover. Thrust into the world, pour out your terrors, pray to the one you lay beside. Do not sleep through this life. Sleep is death. Hunt the back alleyways of passion and let the stars gaze down at you and cry out in ferocious envy: "They love!"

* * *

Dreams of days of white linen lain out on deep, hot, green grass; spring breeze, ice cube-melted water running cool down the wrist. Life lain aside as well, the swords aside, the primal urges resting. There is wisdom in the nothingness: let someone else hold up the sky today. I choose to sleep among the stones and ants for a time. I choose irresponsibility. I revel in lazy. I put out all the candles, let the singing bowls still and wonder about dark and dirty things. Today, just now, I allow for it all, allow the crash and kiss of life to wash over me. I don't even care about God today. Which is just as God would have it.

Peace & love, Bradley

*Dylan Thomas