I am musing on what we do for life: what we will do for life. On what it means to be a human, to have talents unexpressed, to live a betrayed life where our air is tainted for money, our food the same, our housing untenable, our transport distilled from earthblood. We live where every pleasure has a razor edge of profit scraped from it, profit lining another’s pocket. I see them grinning like the comic long-jawed jester wearing a herringboned cap with two points topped in bells. That simple smile becomes a grin, a rictus, the teeth sharpen to incisors of serrated & saw-toothed ivory.

I feel the jaws close about at times; I am shaken like a dog-toy, by emotions: people suffering hurts me, too; people sick make my hands twitch to reach out & erase pain; bloody bruises weep & mew for salves of crushed herbs, cool & soothing. Howling children grasp empty hands, eyes crusted shut.

We give ourselves to life eagerly, bones bared for chewing through to the marrow. We are walking appetites, voracious & calling aloud for satisfaction. We want. We want. We do not even quite understand, but we want. We whine for love, we are numb with its lack; that longing fills us like music, we choke on it, but we breathe it in with a frisson of eager satisfaction. And even in that tiny satisfaction we are sated, We think we have returned to balance, we sign our names in tears to the contracts we agreed to keep.

I turn, I don again the body almost erased by sorrow, fled of its shadow of grace. I flex my mind, presuming feathers & wings & claws for feet. I wriggle in, & the claws become toes, the feathers skin, the wings bone.

This is what I do for life. This is my fate, my borrow, my bond: the reason I exist, the words I eat for breakfast, leathery bacon & silken eggs, tangy salt. The day remorselessly forms up around me: work & play & movement; air & earth & sky.

I am deboned & then restored. 

The morning is music unheard, the sun forming lyrics unsung. A beautiful day emerges from the formless night-dark promise. The day is a  purse of riches I may spend or save & jingle with a thought.

My heartbeat is thunder, & if I am still enough, my eyes pulse in its rhythm. 

I live. I endure. I am.