Rectify

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rectify (v.)
c.1400, from O.Fr. rectifier,  lit. "to make straight" (14c.), from L.L. rectificare "make right" (3c.), from L. rectus  "straight" (see right (adj.1)) + root of facere "to make" (see factitious).

I cannot make this right
no matter how hard I try. 
You died with me
mired in anger with you.
And now you’re gone,
and I don’t even remember
what I was mad about.
There is no redemption possible,
for now there is nothing to redeem,
nothing to purify,
nothing to save,
nothing  

except this swirl of shit
I’m trying to slog through--
both yours leftover and mine.
Most days I dissolve
into it like a soldier hiding 
in a swamp from snipers of grief.
To the outside world
I look like a stock-straight hero
in my dress-white uniform.
They don’t know where I’ve been
and what I’ve seen
of life’s war destruction,
of how bent you have to be
to become one with death
in order to wrestle some life
out of the muck of human existence
and the incomprehensible crucifixion
that lies at the crux of it all.  

Somewhere in the struggle 
I got sucked in, though.
I can’t drag myself up
out of this primordial ooze.
I need to be rectified,
drawn up, washed off,
clothed in my right mind,
set right in whatever force
of love resurrects us all
past the pain. 


                        © 2012 Tess Lockhart. All rights reserved.