"It's Gotta Go"
I. A single cracked neon flickers above the neighborhood laundromat— coins tumble / clatter / shiver / clink like starlings startled into dusk in a whirlwind of murder; so much depends upon this brittle light still insisting yes, to exist is good.
II. I saw the republic of billboards screaming mercy along the interstate— tall priests of plastic prophecy & their gospel of BUY / BURN / BURY— and I howled my small name into the exhaust‑colored dawn, my chest a drum of bewildered blood. O mad‑eyed century! you wire electrodes to our dreams, pipe phantom wars through pocket screens, yet every traffic‑light pause or breath births a miracle: some daffodil bulldozed flat last week already unlatching green knives toward the sun. Tell me that isn’t holy. Tell me the heart isn’t a rogue generator spinning gold even while the grid goes down.
III. My father, Coca Cola sugar on his knuckles, says simply: “Kid, life’s gotta go.” Not wisdom polished smooth, but a river stone from the Cedar he’s carried pocket‑warm fifty years, thumbed, believed.
So I follow the river— herons lifting like slow blue prayers, water scripting its silver sentences on the air. I kneel, drink, remember: the world is wounded & luminous, both.
IV. Listen— the geese are stitching the torn sky back together, calling anyone still breathing to open the door, step outside, feel the wind write yes yes yes along the bones.
And we keep keeping on— not because the night is gentle, but because somewhere a clover, four-leafed, splits the pavement, because the heart, faulty engine, still beats its red music, because even now our cracked neon human soul refuses to quit, throwing its fragile, strobing courage across the darkened nation we pledge our allegiance.