Let there be lapses

Weeds in the garden, unswept porches,

A walk never taken,

A flower unnoticed,

Missed bill, missed text, missed appointment.

Let there be undone things

Half-written sentences never finished

A stack of books never read

Blank pages, unseen lines

Words never seen or heard or spoken.

Let there be glory in what-is-not —

All the unachieved

Unbelieved

Underserved

Overlooked.

Let us glory in these.

Let there be errors

Not just the tiny ones we can laugh away

But enormous, life-altering errors.

Huge risks taken which do not end well.

Huge efforts made which result in what we call failure.

(In fairness,

Any effort is success in certain realities.)

But let us — for a moment — judge by the world of machines,

Of binaries

Of industrialized morality

And call it failure.

Failure is the word we assign to all unexpected outcomes.

So, let there be failure.

Let failure warp our seeing and diminish our being,

Let it ride among us waving a torch,

Shame-blasting and guilt-smearing,

Blinding us with ridiculously disproportional fiery judgment,

Grinding nose to dirt

Binding self to work.

Let there be mistakes which make us weep

Keep us awake at night

Cause us to question our sanity, our decency,

Our right to be here,

Our ability to keep being here.

Let there be broken edges

Sawed-off pieces we cannot smooth down

Pointy bits irritating and upsetting

Dangling splinters and shards over chasms of regret.

Let there be surrender.

Let us call it what it is: giving up.

Surrender sounds too noble,

Enlightened, as if I didn’t have to but I chose to.

That’s not what this is.

Let there be quitting.

Let there be Done.

Not because we see what we have made, and it is good.

This is not putting a bow on a gift.

This is saying some things are too broken to be fixed.

Let there be giving up.

Lay down there, lay down, be still, give up.

Face in the mud, breathing in, wheezing in the stuff of life, the dirt,

The lowly dirt, the trudged-upon dirt, the worthless dirt

From which we came and to which we all return.

Let us lay there, breathing in this dirt,

This pure self This known self This elemental self

Hell yes, failure. I embrace you.

Brother! Sister! Mother! Father!

Come quickly! Come and rejoice, for I have failed!

Come and celebrate!

Set out the feast!

Call the guests!

And enter into the joy of your child:

Humanity raw

Humanity broken

Humanity dirty

Humanity ill-fitted to survive

Humanity traumatized

Humanity doing such a fucked-up job of it

Humanity violent and stumbling

Humanity bruised and crusted at the edges

Humanity clawing its way from the dark tunnel of history

Humanity side-eyeing the stars while blood drips from our fingers

Humanity bargaining for the right to squirm

Humanity bringing a sword to a gunfight

Humanity bullshitting

Humanity asking clever little questions

Humanity dressed in robes, obsessed with ovaries

Humanity unhinged and in charge

Humanity waving exasperated hands in the air

Humanity dishing out pieces of pie

Humanity weeping at the sight of spring flowers

Humanity with big rough hands so careful so gentle holding a tiny new fragile thing

Humanity with smooth precise hands smothering the life out of a class-b citizen

Humanity being a big dumb bully

Humanity the most awkward of the species

Humanity voted most likely to secede from the planet

Humanity pointing and saying look at this! wow!

Humanity wondering, always wondering

Humanity exhausted sitting in a patch of sunlight

Being dirt.

Dirt with form, dirt with spirit.

We are trying so hard to be good dirt.

We rise laughing.

We stand smirking.

We dance howling and tearing our robes, rubbing the holy dirt on our faces.

They call it grief,

They call it madness.

But we know.

We know.