Jeff Buckley’s poem, “New Year’s Eve Prayer,” performed at Sin-é, Manhattan, NYC, 1994.
You, my love, are allowed to forget about the Christmas you just spent stressed out in your parents’ house.
You, my love, are allowed to shed the weight of all the years before, like bad disco clothes. Save them for a night of dancing stoned with your lover.
You, my love, are allowed to let yourself drown, every night, in bottomless, wild and naked symbolic dreams.
You, my love, in sleep can unlock your youth and your most terrifying magic; and dreaming is for the courageous.
You, my love, are allowed to grab my guitar and sing me idiot love songs if you’ve lost your ability to speak. Keep it down to two minutes.
You, my love, are allowed to rot and to die and to live again, more alive and incandescent than before.
You, my love, are allowed to beat the shit out of your television, choke its thoughts and corrupt its mind. Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill the motherfucker! Before the song of zombified pain and panic and malaise and it’s narrow right-winged vision and it’s cheap commercial gang rape becomes the white noise of the world, turn about is fair play.
You, my love, are allowed to forgive and love your television.
You, my love, are allowed to speak in kisses to those around you and those up in heaven.
You, my love, are allowed to show your babies how to dance full bodied, starry eyed, audacious, supernatural and glorified.
You, my love, are allowed to suck in every single endeavor.
You, my love, are allowed to be soaked like a lovers’ blanket, in the New York summertime, with the wonder of your own special gift.
You, my love, are allowed to receive praise.
You, my love, are allowed to have time.
You, my love, are allowed to understand.
You, my love, are allowed to love.
Woman, disobey, when little men believe.
You, my love, are Rebellion.
