Mighty universe

I want to bury the hatchet,
but I don't want
to forget how it felt
to walk into the blizzard.

I carried a hatchet and compass
seeking out firewood to burn.
In the blinding white
the forest saw me as I was born

I was naked, so nude
and the frost
swallowed me up whole
bitter cold in my bitter bones

gave way to bitter bourbon
and serpent friendships,
they gave me bitter drugs
to make senseless out of bitter sense.

I wanted to play fair
but when I was losing
I wanted to pull out the bottom
of Connect Four because I was a bad sport.

So many times I fussed and fought,
but I grew up. Some people don't though
Karma kindly gave me plentiful
and rewardingly. Gifts

plenty of them, wine in my face,
board games tilted over on me
carpets pulled out from under, just like Connect Four chips
and hard shoulders at the end of the match.

Who wins when none of us
can control the things that
make us hurt?
Not you or I for sure.

Probably not any of us
in this whole goddamned
puddle of a city.
Maybe if we dug a hole

all the way to China
like our fathers told us to
we would find that over there
people have more honor than us

but it's probably not the truth.
With each passing year, I get the feeling
that everybody is the same everywhere.
I bet even the Cro-Magnons

had the same shit happen to them.
The same shit that we have all experienced.
Some people probably fell in love, some probably died,
and some probably laughed.

What can I say?
The holes I have put in my brain
have helped me to become a
whole, when I was only half.

Spiritual enlightenment,
life changed, re-birth, etcetera.
Call it what you will, but I call horse arse on you,
higgledy piggledy, shenanigans – you can smell it all for miles

Candidly speaking, exactly the same
yet so far from what used to be,
just trying to bury a hatchet in the mighty universe
with hatchet and compass. Zero plus zero?