Rhythms

Rhythms

I've been thinking a lot about

Rhythms

The patterns that run through songs, lives, and stories

beat

after beat

after drumbeat -

after heartbeat -

after story beat -

after years of (unfaithful, un-diligent, inconsistent, half-hearted) practice

I still somehow can't get the swing of these rhythms -

these rhythms -

these rhythms of song, life and story require a level of mastery to keep up

of which I am found wanting.

And again I am found wanting

just to fall into step with the footfalls of giants -

those who, by lives controlled and convicted,

could climb the mountains ahead of them

their souls steady,

their soles metronomic

tapping out four purposeful, self-empowering beats per measure

per measure

per measure

per measure

per measure

what is the measure of a man?

no

how many measures has a man?

(we've each about two billion heartbeats, on average,

according to someone I heard once.)

(so, assuming four beats per measure,

we've each about five hundred million measures to figure life out.)

(somehow, I can be anxious at once over how that must be

(1) far too many, and (2) nowhere near enough.)

This frantic, fractious, fallen, fortissimo heart can only maintain it's tempo for so long -

so I pray that my heart and life and story and song will fall into a better rhythm before too few bars remain,

a rhythm good enough

for it all to be worth something -

for it all to be worth nothing is, after all, the dread that lies in wait behind everything else.

Do all of us have the same tired dreams throbbing in our heads, fueled by that fear?

Vague pictures of fame, ease, wealth, and pompous benevolence?

Perhaps those aspirations belong exclusively to we who claim the title of 'artist'

Egocentrism is our central mode of maintaining a meter, after all

(Hardly iambic, nor pentametric -

we've no such illusions of consistency, in general)

Instead, erratic are the rhythms of the tortured creative

(a horribly over-romanticized character)

But the drone and direction of every soul's steps may be influenced, narcissistically inventive or not,

by other tired, cultural tempos:

for instance

the familiar rattle of rising to the top,

buying a lot,

pounding in the pickets of the white fence

beat by beat

and treading in dead-eyed sync down the road much more traveled

step by step

till ended forever is a brief, wasted percussion solo,

encored with the tap-tap-tap of nails hammered into a casket -

and epilogued with the final crashing boom of a beautiful white stone

which perfectly matches those pickets...

symbolic.

cymbal-ic.

imbecilic,

these trails I've wandered off on,

paved by the staccato-steps of rabbits.

So allow me to return to the reliable chug-chug-chug

of an earlier train of thought:

Even though I do harbor delusions of grandeur and celebrity (some might call them prophecies) brought about by transcendent habits,

When I say here that I want to cultivate rhythms, I mostly just refer to some very reasonable goals, like

- flossing my teeth every day

- perhaps maintaining a consistent meal plan?

- keeping up with friends better

- going to church each Sunday, and

- praying on more than just the following Monday, and

- going on runs, a couple of times a week, and

- practicing piano, a couple of times a week, and

- practicing guitar, a couple of times a week, and

- reading and writing and breathing and fighting off the aforementioned ongoing inescapable anxious despair which persists beneath and behind every yearning, every victory, every moment of joy, sorrow, love, loss, dreaming, failing, and all else, hanging on unbanishably like a shadow in the bright, almost distracting daylight...

...a couple of times a week...

And so, the crux of the issue:

It is too much.

Too much.

Much too much.

Perhaps part of the issue is our cultural myth of independence:

that we are to find the perfect rhythms alone,

in proud, noble, poetic, percussive loneliness

and then persist as an inspiration or idol for all the other solitary dots on our individualistic western graph.

Yes, perhaps we aren't supposed to do it alone.

But there is one other key on which I must take a beat;

(with which I shall conclude this monstrosity of a poem)

(please release your sighs of relief on tempo)

The other key

might be

presence.

Yes.

Maybe the real key

is to be present;

not five moments or measures or years ahead,

worried about how we will ever achieve all that we ought,

and not a dozen seconds, beats, or months behind,

stumbling over regret for the unchangeable,

but instead,

truly

in this moment

this step

this beat

of the drum,

heart, and

story