Live and Burn

If you lack courage you always loose. If you never strip yourself bare and roar at the wind as it lashes at your puckering flesh, then you go out like a candle snuffed swiftly by mitten swathed finger tips, having never had a chance to get knocked over onto your side so that all of the wax comes pouring out, hot and translucent and your little flaming tongue flickers out hungrily and meets with some kindling, a synthetic fibered rug or the gossamer drapes employed to veil the houses big unblinking eyes.

Goddamn it! You will never bring the house down if you don’t burn a little yourself. It is painful and terrible, and then you get used to it, bit by bit. The heat becomes a thing which you can bear for small and every increasing increments of time, but by golly, that will never happen if you don’t stay in the kitchen, or even go into the kitchen to begin with.

We can see only later how things might have been different if we had been undeterred by the threat of pain. When we are distanced from the experience of discomfort we think that we will be brave warriors, proud champions, and yet whenever we have the chance to get into the ring we shy away, like spoiled little girls that run off to hug their grandmothers legs and suck their thumbs rather than clean their rooms. So the toys lay all over the etheric floors of our mind, our play things, our fantasies slowly transforming into nightmares as they mingle together unrealized, seasoned with guilt and doubt and sloth. The meek of heart will wither and vanish without a lasting trace, leaving only a transcendental curl of grayish smoke which will dissolve into the atmosphere moments after they are snuffed out.

You loose everything when you do not take risks. As the saying goes; “Use it or loose it.” It is as true of life as anything else, even truer perhaps. Death is a real concern, especially for those who don’t make the effort to live before its inevitable dawning. Standing on the sidelines, playing with all the playthings in our minds, never coming out to slay the real dragons or fuck the real princesses, growing weaker and pastier at each missed opportunity, we let the entire cosmos down. When, because you fear some trick, you fail to accept that beautiful girl´s invitation to sit beside her on the bus, or stand with her in line at the movies, you not only let yourself and the princess down, but all the heroes and all the gods in the heavens.

Everything in creation is depending on you to rescue it with a measure of foolish and heartfelt passion. Do not be the last unicorn that sees that the unicorns have all disappeared and so takes up work as a mare in some dirty stable, waiting to pull the plow or be penned up with some intolerable stallion for the furtherance of horsekind because it is unfashionable, embarrassing, or silly to be a unicorn. Be the last brave heart, busted open and bleeding bright crimson all over the blue and gray world.

There is no shame in being the last or the only one of your kind, doing the painful work of seeking out the other shinning immortals, their hair full of stars, their hearts and bodies fringed with cerulean and titian flames, blazing through the cosmos, wailing in the wind that feeds the flames melting away their breasts. There is only shame in hiding in your room, in your placid life, in your filthy stall, watching the glimmering of passions go dim behind a cage of bone and softly fluttering pink lungs, like butterflies witnessing their precious one day of life descend into the awaiting twilight.