Let there be lapses
Weeds in the garden, unswept porches,
A walk never taken,
A flower unnoticed,
Missed bill, missed text, missed appointment.

Let there be undone things
Half-written sentences never finished
A stack of books never read
Blank pages, unseen lines
Words never seen or heard or spoken.

Let there be glory in what-is-not —
All the unachieved
Unbelieved
Underserved
Overlooked.
Let us glory in these.

Let there be errors
Not just the tiny ones we can laugh away
But enormous, life-altering errors.
Huge risks taken which do not end well.
Huge efforts made which result in what we call failure.
(In fairness,
Any effort is success in certain realities.)
But let us — for a moment — judge by the world of machines,
Of binaries
Of industrialized morality
And call it failure.

Failure is the word we assign to all unexpected outcomes.

So, let there be failure.
Let failure warp our seeing and diminish our being,
Let it ride among us waving a torch,
Shame-blasting and guilt-smearing,
Blinding us with ridiculously disproportional fiery judgment,
Grinding nose to dirt
Binding self to work.

Let there be mistakes which make us weep
Keep us awake at night
Cause us to question our sanity, our decency,
Our right to be here,
Our ability to keep being here.

Let there be broken edges
Sawed-off pieces we cannot smooth down
Pointy bits irritating and upsetting
Dangling splinters and shards over chasms of regret.

Let there be surrender.
Let us call it what it is: giving up.
Surrender sounds too noble,
Enlightened, as if I didn’t have to but I chose to.
That’s not what this is.

Let there be quitting.
Let there be Done.
Not because we see what we have made, and it is good.
This is not putting a bow on a gift.
This is saying some things are too broken to be fixed.

Let there be giving up.

Lay down there, lay down, be still, give up.
Face in the mud, breathing in, wheezing in the stuff of life, the dirt,
The lowly dirt, the trudged-upon dirt, the worthless dirt
From which we came and to which we all return.
Let us lay there, breathing in this dirt,
This pure self This known self This elemental self
Hell yes, failure. I embrace you.

Brother! Sister! Mother! Father!
Come quickly! Come and rejoice, for I have failed!
Come and celebrate!
Set out the feast!
Call the guests!
And enter into the joy of your child:
Humanity raw
Humanity broken
Humanity dirty
Humanity ill-fitted to survive
Humanity traumatized
Humanity doing such a fucked-up job of it
Humanity violent and stumbling
Humanity bruised and crusted at the edges
Humanity clawing its way from the dark tunnel of history
Humanity side-eyeing the stars while blood drips from our fingers
Humanity bargaining for the right to squirm
Humanity bringing a sword to a gunfight
Humanity bullshitting
Humanity asking clever little questions
Humanity dressed in robes, obsessed with ovaries
Humanity unhinged and in charge
Humanity waving exasperated hands in the air
Humanity dishing out pieces of pie
Humanity weeping at the sight of spring flowers
Humanity with big rough hands so careful so gentle holding a tiny new fragile thing
Humanity with smooth precise hands smothering the life out of a class-b citizen
Humanity being a big dumb bully
Humanity the most awkward of the species
Humanity voted most likely to secede from the planet
Humanity pointing and saying look at this! wow!
Humanity wondering, always wondering
Humanity exhausted sitting in a patch of sunlight
Being dirt.
Dirt with form, dirt with spirit.

We are trying so hard to be good dirt.

We rise laughing.
We stand smirking.
We dance howling and tearing our robes, rubbing the holy dirt on our faces.
They call it grief,
They call it madness.

But we know.
We know.