I am going to tell you a story, one that you may not understand at first reading. It comes from the wind and the sorrows over all the land…
This one is a hard one to write, and has taken me my whole life to here to begin…
I don’t know if I am found or not, or lost. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know anything at all.
So I went out for a smoke under the moon hidden in the clouds and asked for a dance to begin as soon as I’d finished my smoke.
All the clouds behind the moon, grinned down at me.
Maybe it was some kind of encouragement I was being sent, or perhaps a certain kind of prelude to a forthcoming event I was hoping for, but whatever, it felt like it was close; and getting closer every moment.
But I felt sad, too sad to accept it, as I stood in the rain until I was all worn down with nothing left to do and nowhere left to go.
Walking in the dark woods later I found I wasn’t afraid at all.
Going home at midnight I locked the doors and watched out for any booby-traps that I may have set and couldn’t be seen.
Like a ghost I wandered around the big house and wondered if I had any friends at all in any of the rooms that I passed in my solitary journey going from one place to another without really seeing anything more than the movie film of it all that filled the spaces but never really inviting me in enough for me to want it more than what I could scrape from the gutter.
I was so fucked; and not even chasing dreams anymore, just putting one foot in front of the other until the day was over and I could rest and fade away.
Perhaps I’m to blame for my failures, for my ineptitude and turpitude.
The rage that had kept me going for so long was burnt out and I had nothing left to offer the gods, just my pacing in the halls where I waited to be gone.
And I heard myself saying over and over that I could find no more worth for myself, after a lifetime of being fearless. Was the end close?
Looking at my face in the mirror I could find nothing to relate to; whatever it was that was there was not me, so desperate and forlorn…
Well, I was in another town, and wanting some staircase to the moon goddess, another moon goddess, like the one who’d left me a long time ago; one I would never find again.
I loved her but had nothing to give that she could hold on to.
We parted strangers.
But it wasn’t what I wanted.
She gave me no space to hold her.
So I had to let her go.
That was long ago…
Still falling, all this time later, I said to myself, tomorrow I will fly…
But I was possessed by the beast and could not fly. No, I will fly with the beast so close.
I know I am still breathing, but I feel like I’m sucking through a straw the life essences I need to see me all the way out of all the booby-traps I’d set for myself.
Gargling away in the blues, I jumped into my next face, and acted for all I was worth until the curtain came down; but I just knew that I was greater than my seeming that was happening.
Taking my bows and accolades I departed to somewhere else to start all over again the next day. But none of it paid the rent...
All my heroes are dead now. And I am just a ghost that heard them for a while until I couldn’t hear them anymore.
And friends that came said I was too intense. And others said I was defeatist. I could only agree.
I don’t remember when it all became so blue; and I wish I could change my mind, if only I could.
So I play the old songs and know them all bittersweet, as I wait for the end to claim me.
There’s nothing I can say to change it so I don’t try anymore, and anyway, when the end comes I want to be alone, no noise to accompany me to where I will go.
Yes, when the end comes, I want to be alone, to be in my own heart on that final journey…
But before then there is work to do to fight for what is right, though quite why it has to be fought for I don’t know, it should be normal and every day; but then I may have to gargle until I’m blue for that to be…
