Dear Future,
Dear Future (Artists),
Dear Future Dear Future Dear Future,

(To and From the Ancient Muse which Rages inside us All)

Have you noticed how the philosophers these days are getting it wrong, are getting it wrong, are getting it wrong? Have you noticed that there is a deeper knowledge raging and rising up within you (from within the earth) like resistance / like song / like checks written with nothing in the bank to back it up / like chaotic rhythm rising up above the theoretical mess we make out of such times as these? You must must must imagine what you cannot imagine, what has never been imagined, you must live inside of impossibility in order to learn its striking cadence / its incomprehensible language. You must move into the corridors of nightmare narratives to feel your way through its sharp edges / lopsided floors / melting eyes / dancing skulls. You must allow despair to engulf your body like a profound presence you cannot take your eyes off of. You must allow time to take you into its metal teeth to tear muscle from bone in order to build a new body able to withstand the past come future melted into a (this) single solitary moment where you face nothing but doubt come material—doubt, that ghost which takes on skin and throat and a blanket of razored flesh. You must turn to look this gift horse straight in the mouth knowing the kick will come quick and decisive—severe.

This is how to (re) build the body. What it costs to survive. What it means to take the apocalypse of the end of time and days and put it down onto paper, into poem, into tonality, into thrust and motion and desire and words upon words upon words upon those sweet keys of the piano which usher and conjure forth a knowledge of a deeper kind. Have you noticed how the philosophers these days are getting it wrong, getting it wrong, getting it wrong?

Hush now, a darker wisdom this way comes.

The poet of the future (the Ancient Muse inside us All) comes down among the gashes of grief to whisper incantations of a costly hope taken out like chunks of flesh like down-payments to survival in a brittle and broken present. Alight with fire she sings the great songs of mourning / of gin / of grit which begin deep within the rumblings of the sea and rises like specters from wreckage and wreck to ignite the human dream with flame / flood / earthquake / devastating theaters of despair and peculiar love sharp as an iron hot.

Landlocked, I dream sweet sonnets of the sea. And there (here), she comes to me—that Ancient Muse inside us all, that great Poet of the past / present / future composed as the last song of Silence. This rising Artist of the Sea commands the Pen, the Ink, the Brush, the Torch, the Anvil, the Stamp. I am no prophet, only shoddy philosopher and poor poet. Have you noticed how the philosophers these days are getting it wrong? This Ancient Muse comes to me, ties me to the pyre, hums. I transcribe her exorcisms, her conjurings, the spells, the instructions. She lights the match against her teeth. We will meet again. Soon, we will meet again. We will meet again. As the smoke transcends I give you the last instructions from the Ancient Muse:

Find the sea and learn to look. There, the future dissolves and rebuilds. Dissolves and rebuilds. Dissolves and rebuilds. The more the salt burns the eyes the more the eyes begins to see.

Attune your heart, that great breaking vessel, to the great mourning song of the tectonic plates which dance an agonizing tango beneath our feet, our cars, our banks, our golf courses.

Let that wild dog which we call the soul raging inside the human rib cage run free. Just for the morning, let it off the leash, let it have its way with you, let it lick the sand, let it pull your shoulder out of the socket as it demands to go someplace new. It will only cost you something— everything.

Shoot the cans out in the yard. Make a soup. Water a wildflower.

Go AWOL from the demands of rationality and reason and truth for there are truer truths which break like glass made out of sugar, splintering and shattering sweet upon the tongue, dissolving into a moment where the body learns the saccharine taste of the darker magic which is temporal and erotic and corporeal.

Hop the rails. Ride the line. Watch the train flatten every wish like pennies you were only just a few days ago too rich to keep. Risk the loss of fingers grabbing for a few cents. Let desperation reverberate through the vocal chords and shatter the illusion of self-sufficiency. You’ve been wrong. You’ve been wrong this whole time—but how else to know you are loved?

Let the whirlwinds flatten your mind and all the small thoughts which keep you tethered but be tethered—tether yourself to me, this great darkness, this abyss, this paycheck gone sour, for I will write a poem of the carcass you leave behind. Ready the body. Purify the mind. Ring the liver. Sink the teeth into the bready inside of the soul which rattles about the skull.

Fetter yourself to me, to song / to dance / to wave coming in too hard / to last breath / to desperate kick to pitch the head up above the wave / to knuckles of grief curled helplessly around empty palms where love once lived / to whirls of smoke from all those dreams swirling up and into empty desert air.

If you believe in prayer, refuse to come to your knees—sweep your enemy’s kitchen instead.

If you do not believe in prayer begin a prayer right now—beginning with: “beloved, are you there?” beginning with: “dear ocean,” “dear stars,” “dear mary,” “dear salt and tear and sweat,”…help

When you have finished, take your last wish and give it to the lover who taught you that the heart goes on a journey all alone.

Bury the cans you shot in the yard like bodies like old photos like gold like promises you never could keep. Water what grows. Eat only what you grow.
Be afraid of the woods but enter them anyway, find the last apple hanging on the neighbor’s tree, let loneliness teach you hunger, give the worm a home.
Allow your heart out of its crate / harness / sheath /chasteness and allow it to run down the beach even though it may never come back, let it leave you behind for it might have always been too good for you, for shame for all of those demands you put upon it. Forgive yourself. Let the heart and all that goes with it run like a wild dog who is wise enough to know there is not enough time to stop and look back.

Sing for your sins.Dance for your dinner.Weep for your money.

Let loneliness roam your haunted hallways carving its name into the walls with a dull knife.

Let silence take you apart bone by bone, let it use your femur to pick out rotting flesh from the back of its teeth, let its cadence put you to sleep — and there, there, there, in the undulating cavern of pain and love, you will find me and I will be waiting.

I will tell you what to write next.

When I come for you,

Be Ready.

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