To sink down below into the bathwater
is to be the word that no one says
out of fear of offending
and the book that someone picks up
but puts back down
after finding no summary
and the song that would be great
if it weren't for that pounding bass
and the sonnet you can't quite get
through all the rhymes and rhythms and metaphors
and the mountain that was moved
when it had its back turned
and the sky whose ceiling was exposed
to the light and the dark and Heaven and Hell,
who decided to give up, hang its head, and cry.

To awake face down
with fatal gasps like cymbals crash
is to believe it all,
like a New Year’s resolution,
short of expectations.
The bathtub’s full of falling short and hot water
and I’ve got to endlessly scrub the small town off of me.
You can only be surrounded by
yellow teeth and half-formed slang words
for so long before you start looking bigger.

After a while you start to look past
the potato chip factory to find
some jagged lines set against the sky.
You ignore the rusting cars
sitting in the street, awaiting a day
when they will be driven again,
and you look at the big picture.
And you see faces.

And I see faces with sloping cheeks that artists die to draw
and faces that show an autobiography in lines
and ones with number-the-stars freckles and half-moon smiles
and ones that hold ostensible honesty
and I think I see your face too.
But then again, that just may be the billowing factory smoke,
reminding me there is a life after fifteen years.

The next time that you have that feeling
that aching
that wanting
don’t hold it in,
and don’t hold it back,
like so many before you have.
Let your heart break like a water balloon,
let its fillings run down your body,
and let them collect in your toes like growing puddles
and don’t let them tell you
that you’re a four letter word
or that you’re an abandoned half-read book
or a song or a sonnet or a mountain or a sky
that’s just not good enough.

Know that the raw force that courses through you
is hope –
and don’t call it a revival,
a rebirth
a resurrection
or even a renewal,
and don’t call it a comeback
because it’s always been there.