Ode To A Prizefighter

Don’t panic

Don’t crumble into a foggy lagoon of tears

Don’t shiver under firecracker skies

With its tiger roar sonic boom

Or be dashed inside

From night’s crooked smile

And vacant moon

You’ve got nerve, my friend

You’ve got gutsy punch

And electric storm fury

That barrels through

The razored maze

And

The needling briars

Of brutes and bastards

Who want to tank your ship

Through the greedy storehouse

Of their petty mutinies,

So hold on to the wheel

And the invisible calm

Knowing that the absurdity of life

Is all the better

For you being in it,

And may your transparent heart of glass

Blind the dogged scoundrel

And flood the malice eyed adders

Hungry to bruise your heel,

For the self loathing beasts

At war with themselves

Despise a ravine of purity

And may their towers of rabble rousing Babel

Plant themselves face first

Into the Godsmacked realities

Of black and blue earth,

But don’t write your epitaph

Or realign your course,

You’ve only touched the simple depths

Of a universe of worth

Alive in the kindness of your eyes

And in the beautified candor of your words,

So keep sweating blood

If you must

But saints preserved

Keep pushing on,

Wave your die hard flag of no return

Because I think you absolutely matter

To God

To us

To art

To the world

To the neighbouring prisms

That reflect the stellar outline

Of a diamond pearl

That shines

That is you

So onwards you prizefighter

And steady

To ready

To deaden

The calloused nerve

That pinched you

In its boxing cage,

But break down the gates

And let the world

Hear the resurrected songs

Of your valour

And make it

A revolution

Of love,

Saturn’s return

That dries up the frenzied

Scalds of hate,

Now onwards

Now on!