Long Walk

The Long Walk: Overture, In Your Honor
by Todd Jackson

Leave others to the endless womb,
and to the smooth segue from womb to grave
With not one crack of cold dry light.
It is their avid wish, and I wish them well.
May some other God hold their hands in the dark.

My own years of bathos did not pass,
as is proper, with the end of boyhood
But they have now passed.
My back is straight. My eyes are clear.
I am ready.

About me is no land fit for men.
Delphian Apollo, I bid You,
Teach me to see myself my own object.
Show me a shape no mere man may shape,
Then set me loose upon the dust.

Delphian Apollo, electric,
You have dazzled the horizon with virgin worlds.
I bid you set them spinning in my eyes like
twin vortices.
Then lead me forward into the dawn.

Copyright © 2007, Todd Jackson