Clean slate every morning

Stone
3 min readFeb 11, 2021
Source

How dirty is your slate? How many layers?
‘ow deep are the scratches? The ruts?
Feeling your grooves eroded by tomorrow?

Ruts chiseled by doubt are planed true by grain
By praxis, incantations transfigure not layer
I’ve become Scarface digging my mourning’s base

I’ve lost my perspective to see mornings clean
ve calmed boredom feeling by rag erasing
Erasing me clean, a slate layered with waxed scars

Like the Godfather, I’m a marred tabula rasa
o, unwilling to fly straight streaking divided panes
But, the sins of the dead breed & kick in layered sheets

Even if blackboards are wiped every moment
‘ek, fall into my lifelong scribbles with blind gravity
Like inmates do with metal spoons iterating

I can make utensils into shivs, dozers, or erasers
‘ve the freedom to back-stab myself with hate’s point
The slate handed can only be erased by owners only

Though love came to bind my canyons shut
‘il scrawls at the starting line till rivers dig & carve
It’s stupid to tether yourself to self-assured sherpas

Thinking mountains of righteousness have rewards
hem & us believing way-finding is someone else’s job
Hear their scaly slates on mole-hills howling victory

Cleaning your slate requires giving up on fair rags
? Don’t twitch when moldy erasers wipe old lines
A new spell will come when you are ready to sweep for good

Cross over from ruining slates un-resurrected
‘um, sexy tabula rasas exchanging dirty chalks
Blackboards consuming all on earth without rest or recycle

Is there a way out of the classroom on a slate?
billions of unpolished boards on a pyre needed?
So few see so many clean slates lit without amends

So few to witness the infected boards recycled
, not just every morning or mourning new?
But redwoods in pine cones also hope for better futures

A clean slate is reborn like an impatient seed
h, be the same kernel all your life even as a sad tree?
Like your favorite jammies worn since birth, overgrown?

Give up on identity then surrender comes easy
ee, when God wipes your bored face like it’s a slate
Don’t hide in a corner, wipe yourself well. He sees all

Till there is nothing left of myself but a bored board
‘he task given at birth will have room to scrawl
Imperfect as hand-made chalks pressed for time

Not perfect like machined identical, not special
o, empty like the quadrants of mint boards streaked
Clean by a true man’s tears and God’s grace will give-up

Give-up on perfect lines over old ruts like nail polish
‘od, sedimentary layers sweeps my sins under rugs
As if God & Satan handed out honesty & dirty contracts

Then it’s my job to demolish black canyons unseen
‘hen, care if my shameless face is trapped in a farce?
Have a heart for my dirty slates for love erases asphalts

How heavy & caked mine must be by misdemeanors
ow long till sobriety gets into the groove
There is joy in Clean and in a sty, but only good feels good.

All of us empty like prey & mints
ll of us wanting clean slates, top to bottom
Like silver wolves who never were downy pups

We slake our clean slates falsely deprived
were always clean like birth, but blind
Reborn on a supposed dirty tableau

I imagine lions & tigers in hell
‘tching for a clean slate reincarnated
Forgive me Padre, I have eaten man & monkeys

Wipe my sins away like minty fresh blackboards?
ill you give a reformed predator a new board?
Pray, a new eraser, too? Will there be something left over?

Shhh….

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