Revelation

Inside the chamber in the earth
the darkness teaches,

never ceases, though this whirling ball
sets forth its glory in a thousand frames.

Pain is the carrot on the stick, sacrifice
and sorrow just the stuff that will not sell--

yet through the stifled sobs, it resonates,
and though it gives us tears

it is the spirit provenance
that lets us travel back upon the years

and find humanity within-- locate the self
distorted, broken, brother to the adam

and the eve scarcely able to remember
paradise. The newer heaven and earth

is said to leave behind
the sorrow and the sighs

but they are gifts that mold us still
and hammer on our consciousness

that we who seek the new Jerusalem
will find it in the shroud.

I saw the broken men walk from the mines
and when I saw their eyes, I hurt like them...

I loved them, then, the black upon their skin.
I loved the knowing that they never would

grow old, their dusted lungs would be my own,
their breath grown shallow, drowning me...

that from the gift of tragedy I was enchained
within those other hearts, admitted without test,

without a crumbling document
to certify my worth before the fellowship

of those repulsive soil-stained arms
embracing me.

There is no choosing grace like this,
no pain accessible, no paradise

to promise sweetness,
for of all it is the gift most free...

down in the chamber of the earth
where wisdom hides within the dark

beneath the guise of agony.
~