A poem by Bruce Ditman.
If you’re fixin to fight me, let’s fight.
Do your worst, bite down hard because I hit first.
It’s all worth fighting for, round here, I’d accept.
If you’re here to fuck me, let’s fuck.
Tiny fingertip bruises, no one loses, when I grab your ass.
Exultation, deep exhalation. I accept.
If your here to haunt me, then I forget.
Sieving my past for pain isn’t a living, of a strain I value.
I forgive you, my past, I accept you, at last.
If you’re here to love me, let’s love.
Warm me, warn me, one form, we,
Hold me, I won’t hold you back. I accept.
If you’re here to test or trial me, I accept.
My skin has the millimeters, my bedrock the minerals.
My life untested is a life not yet vested. Challenge accepted.
Time is what we’ve got together. And it is of what we make it.
So I look you in the eye and let you know
There is nothing in your quiver I can’t accept.
A New Year’s Resolution—my submission:
I submit to the process of loving and fighting
Of fucking and testing and forgetting, forgiving
That is my goal for my next year of living.
—
Photo: Over the Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball 2013 / 2014 by Anthony Quintano / Flickr Creative Commons License