Better The Gain
By Jack Joseph Smith
Though you may thrust the hour final
While a star is born
is taken down from the mantel
I won't ask to deceive
Whether you do believe
in God or not
And as in opaque and clear
In this matter
There be two this time
on no record determined
In the possibilities
of the absolute
And there I awoke
Between the new subtle
seconds of sickness
Replacing the madness
that was once
My Everyman's everyday
crack of dawn
Viewing the simple
structures of paintings
and things that are slight
But so much carry
the absence and oppisite
of loss
While all I had before
was not gone
Yet either
what was there
in my nightmare
Here though in consquence
Set there is a distance
from the old senselessness and sin
Thankful I am
After the message of death
and what the last
of my seasons has wrought
To choose this chance
To reshape
and as with these words
To reconstruct my soul
From that which had been
extinguished and sucked
away into shameful silence
Where rising the fist of self
has strength to finish up
and restart the eternity
of today
Knowing by
The speaking eye
Now all the right
and all the wrong
And what I had done
and done not
about them
Even while
Laced with the good
of hidden perpetual
Showed me as a constant
How the search for lust,
a courtship of decadence
Could not by will be stopped
or surgically cut
Would not split apart
what I will not confess
So the sickness had me fight the embrace
even though it did not exist
The transgression however
with a life of its own
had consumed itself
So the concept
of a flat out living Hell
was dead first
Thus rebirth
was the day before
Christ visited my four walls
No doubt
giving the good Lord
something better to do
While releasing my heart and soul
long enough to muster the truth
and beat a bully