personal declaration of radical responsibility (audio poetry 4:29)

First written and posted November 2012.
Audio added April 2018.

for everything now fallen away
i bear responsibility

for every delicious return to the table of earthly delights
every soul-numbing morsel of dispossession
inhaled, imbibed,
every dark and slithery corner into which i stumbled
and every moonlit mesa i traveled in the company
of the all-knowing sky,
i tell you now that i held the key,
i turned the lock
and this i lay at the feet of no one
save myself

if i was led astray by so-called inner and outer dragons
i know that in ways i need no longer understand,
i invited them all to the party
turned a blind eye and deaf ear to willful discernment
cracked a door here, a transom there in entry bidden
laid rose petals along a twisted path
to entice the screeching hordes

though i no longer feel it essential
to root out the whys and wherefores
amid the bulrushes of understanding,
i know that when i allow it, i create it
when i create it, i experience it
from beneath the labyrinthian corridors of my mind
nestled within ribboned valleys of an upheaving heart,
the choice to choose has always been mine
and I ask no one to bear responsibility
for the outcome but my self
however, whatever,
i acknowledge that organism to be

if self-healing needed to occur,
i lifted the scalpel of becoming
stepped onto the wheel and commenced to spiral,
divorced from the clattering that surrounded me
i dove deeply into foggy madness,
whirled to and fro by shifting sands of consciousness,
i turned my back on fear,
tuned out the labored breathing at my heels
and approached with temerity
an array of gold-juiced apples
hung profuse in forests lush, forgiving

if someone left knotted ropes and tethers
on the basement floor
and headed up the mountain,
that someone was me
if the music of wings sounded across the heavens
it originated from within me
and my errant flock of origami cranes,
unfolding in freefall as we came to rest
on feather-soft mounds
exhausted remains of grasped and
grasping determination

and thus, when i soared beyond
the valley of niggardly scraps
i had come to accept in dilute resolution,
i approached the temple of the sun
beholden to none but The All,
humbled into stature noble, uncompromised
and ready to reclaim in great joy
that birthright that had rested in a room without walls
since before the seeds of time were sown

thus it shall be known
that i bear responsibility
for all things fallen away and all things made new
and this i lay at the feet of no other