John, as you lie in your stormy bed tonight,
wishing you could keep your memories intact
and that, before new light, triumphs you have dreamed
come true and that you rule every delight,
every one with whom you've made contact, think:
we love the unknown and crave what we should fear.

You created your own life ten thousand times,
reformed its shape to a chain of paradigms
and held fast to the flesh from which, once secured,
you grew disenfranchised. You wrote your own god
and dispatched appeals on immaculate sheets.
Prayers ring true only when they say what one feels.

The most terrible fraud is the illusion
that passion is conversion, that one loses
by being more himself. The blooming tree
holds its leaves unthinkingly, finds its own plan,
yet fits the complex moral hierarchy.
Independent forces confound gravity.

John, beyond the next street and the next are worlds
clamorous with eccentric soliloquoys.
At every corner, communion goes awry.
The cities of our souls teem with enterprise.
If you are awake, you cannot compromise,
nor crave the unknown and fear what you should love.