Yes, I heard many things in the shards that gleamed from the edge so of all I knew...
Close to half way, after all the mirrors were broken, a silence came to say nothing at all, and as I listened to it, I heard many things in the shards that gleamed from the edges of all I knew.
Comfort me where I need it, I thought, passing through my dreams going north in the elementary agitation of information overload.
So then I said: oh my God is that the time, I have an appointment; and so, dashing off to it I ran very fast and got as far as the back door before I became disillusioned by it all and sat on the wall and held my head in my hands feeling most miserable.
A man of many whispers called Chang Chung passed me on the outside then and laid a note on me that said: when your death comes, open up a window to your soul, and hang on tight.
Right o, I said, and began to wave my flag furiously for some reason.
What’s that flag you’re waving asked Chang Chung, on his way back from wherever he’d been.
Surrender, I said, and held it up even higher to show I was most keen.
Run then, said Chang Chung, pulling out his watch to time me.
Nine yards later I began to wonder who Chang Chung was, giving me orders; so I stopped and had a smoke to think about it.
After many years thinking about it, ideas came from somewhere that made me think too much until I just had to buy a banjo and play a song.
Well, what else was I going to do?
Anyway, eventually I set off for wrong turn number 7 that came as no great surprise in the scheme of things just then, and of course I was still thinking things, that perhaps there are some places you don’t go.
One of them being: trying to think two concepts at the same time over and over; this of course makes certain things hard to sustain at an existential level for longer than about three seconds.
I think at this time I was waiting for the grass to grow again; for I’d taken root where I’d stood for so long thinking about it.
It was exactly here that a number 37 bus came along that stopped for me to get on, and then away I went playing my banjo for all I was worth.
Somehow, along the route I got off at wrong turn number 7 and then had to walk all the way back to the beginning to start again on all the thinking that had gone on to confuse me to here, wherever here might be.
Pulling my jumper over my head I made a bee-line with it and threw it in the pond hoping to get a bite.
Days later, and I mean, days later, without one bite to my name, I couldn’t help noticing things that were catching up to me on the outside and making funny gestures that weren’t hard to translate into any language you can think of. I made nothing of it of course, until they began banging a drum; and then I thought: not much sleep tonight.
A bottle of wine to the moon later I got up to stretch and felt a little man in my trousers.
It is at times like this that one needs to get out and find some friends to play with, or roll over and go back to sleep.
I had to save myself from this, and so, in all the thinking I drew up a map that went nowhere. It didn’t matter. I rolled it up into my pocket and poked the little man, and said: on guard, which is English for: sur ses gardes, which is French by the way.
So I jumped through the open window that presented itself to me in my dreaming, and became immediately lost and didn’t know where I was anymore.
Picking up my banjo I plucked the strings and got them in tune, and then began a new song.
You cannot carry it with you forever, you know.
I heard this as I broke down and flew away into the wind and got stoned for it over and over until I couldn’t stand it anymore and so paid them a dollar to take it away.
Not a good idea, for they come back too soon and bring their friends to surround you and make you blind and eating pickles with your fingers through your hair.
I counted to ten and ordered another round of drinks for them, and a swift exit for me.
As I converged into the nothingness I came across what I thought was a new me, hanging around somewhere overhead, but I was mistaken, it was just an old dream I’d left behind long ago, somewhere I couldn’t go anymore, for that door closed on me as soon as I went through it, and no amount of banging on it would make it open again.
When there’s nowhere left to go, turn inside, away from all those blowing leaves that left you with nothing more than nothingness.
Yes, words of wisdom.
So I had to drop it, that heavy weight on my back.
But how does one drop it after it has been there for so long?
Give it to me, said the nothingness.
I gasped, and then grinned; the nothingness was talking to me.
It has to start somewhere, all those beliefs you hold inside yourself to lose, it said, like I had a choice about losing anything.
It has always been your choice, it said.
I couldn’t make up my mind fast enough then to get away from all the incoming that dredged up, so I relegated myself to the sidelines to watch from a distance, and saw the referee who was watching me; strange like, as if there was nothing else to do.
Hands behind my back, and with a little whistle, I ambled along, until I was told not to sing in the desert, it gives false hope.
False hope of what, I asked.
Why, the false hope of all you believe of course.
Maybe it was growing late, and I was tired, and really, what more can one say about nothingness except that there’s not a lot there.
But there it was together with the wound, and there I was trying to work out if it was margarine or butter, when the foghorn went off, which made me think: here we go again, and that’s when I heard a silent cry and wondered if it was coming from me or somewhere else. It was the kind of cry that the recharge squad would make when eyeing the apparition of doom and wondering if anyone had any plans for tomorrow.
Well, I was thinking it was funny how we accept any old blues that comes our way from whatever old scoundrel stuff that happens, when inside we have all the sore we could ever use to give us hurt.
I couldn’t taste my woman any more for she was long gone and I was feeling it was all too long a time between love in the neo gropes of all the sorrow; that’s what I was thinking anyway in the water bellow exchange of the rough sleeping while the mask was slipping in the dying of where I stood.
And if I was a musician my last note would have to be adios; but whatever, I was still feeling too tired to carry on much after the element of the joker had bitten me right through, and though I felt to carry on somehow, I had nowhere to go.
Less than a minute later, or it could have been a month, I wasn’t counting, I found myself taking something to change my head out of the way, and hoping that this time I could re-find that pristine longing I’d lost along the way of all this stuff in the desert.
Maybe there are others out there somewhere, like me, or even further on, that can point a way out of here; but maybe really, there’s no one, and I have to do it all for myself.
But I remember a long time ago I painted all this on the winds that rusted into the ground where my feet were standing so far below me of where I was then; and though I carried the idea of that with me, I never did get back there again to see that and understand it enough to become it, no, I walked away and got lost, with only the scalp of what was left over of it that in a way didn’t mean a thing until I eventually dropped it on the dust to convert back to where it came from; and of course it all comes around again to be dealt with if you haven’t dealt with it in the first place.
When the darkness came I had many postcards to lick a stamp on to and send to anyone I could remember, but I gave it up after a while, the past was disappearing fast, and anyway, they were all dying faster than the postman could deliver.
So I bought another song and played it anywhere I could find that would let me be to lick my wounds, but found I was too old to touch anywhere that didn’t have a bottle and a sad song to keep my company alive, or at least to touch something that tried to take me up, but really only dragged me there so that I had to make an excuse and leave.
I’m not much of a cowboy anymore, those days are long ago, and my body hurts now too much to touch on that again.
So I wander on until the end comes and die every day where I stand to make room for all that I would endure.
And if I make some contact thru my eyes, it’s only half a smile to say of where I’ve been and where I’m not, to raise this old fool up again.
A voice came then, to say: drink lots of wine, and never let them get you down.
As I began counting my money to see how much I had, to pay off the debts that I, for the life of me, could not remember making any contract to get, all of a sudden, a hand came around the corner and grabbed all my shopping bags of hard-earned where I’d put them down momentarily so I could pay the bill, and disappeared with them, leaving me no wiser until I looked for them to find them gone. This is when I began to notice I had many wounds that needed healing; but I wasn’t ready to deal with them.
So I ran into the future, and as the wounds closed behind me, my power began to run out and I became weaker, right up until the last wound closed over, and then I made a cup of tea and promised myself that tomorrow I would go and get myself a real job, maybe somewhere I’ve never been before, but before I could think more on that the lady below said I had to vacate soon or I’d go mad, and she left me with a black eye, for not paying the rent.
I went back to the bed and lay on it as if it was all my world right there where I was, and there was nowhere else.
A sonic boom flying low came too close for comfort and then passed me by faster than I could look up to see if it was god or something.
I will take your eyes if you have nothing else, said the voice of what sounded like a little man popping up behind me.
The kettle, that had a life of its own, began to whistle then most insistently to be saved from boiling over and would have carried on forever if I hadn’t run to turn it off and make a cup of tea, but I think, as I was pouring it I forgot ages ago what it was that I really needed.
Maybe I’m growing older in my old age by the minute realising that the end will come sooner than soon, for, later, when the voice of the little man said: I can say here with some authority, that if you will sign this contract, I can make all your problems go away; and you know what, I almost felt like signing it but came to myself just in time and said: is that so, and began to walk away from whatever I’d fallen into, maybe some trap, but whatever, I wanted away.
There are some people who say things like that you know?
Well I don’t know, but maybe you have to harden the steel or soften the iron to make a difference after midnight comes around in some back seat not to be found, but getting found nonetheless.
I ordered a round of drinks for one, and then I had to wait some while for my order to return.
When the waitress came along doing her room service bit with the drinks in her teeth I fell in love with her and forgot all about my black eye and began to build new dreams from all I thought of her.
Barely six minutes later as the mind wanders, an unknown idea knocked on the door to be entertained, and probably got as far as the wishing well.
I had to wonder about that before I did anything at all more than take another sip of tea, so I put the kettle back on and began to brew up again. I seemed to be drinking a lot of tea for no reason.
Old man time was playing the flute, something foreign sounding, that came to me through the curtains that were moving in the evening breeze that was blowing all the way from Morocco.
The knocking began again at the door; that stupid door that had no boundaries at all except to the little man locked inside his lonely tower who finally escaped and found his way to my door.
The bloody fool, trying to sell my technology I had no use for.
Book your tickets up for Mars here, said the little man.
That god damned little man, where did he keep coming from, and what did he want from me?
I looked into the crystal ball to find the answer but saw nothing out of the ordinary, so I proceeded downwards until I came to the infirmary that had a brain-wash crew ready to inject me with death if I came anywhere near them.
Of course I turned the other way back along that avenue I’d walked down, until I came to the big road and turned right.
Ah, and now we are lost in the lost, I thought.
Whew, what a concept to cause such a quandary.
Quackery I say, it’s all quackery.
Put another record on please, for the love of god, change the god damn track.
And yet, without any fanfare or future ado to cause a fuss the grass out in the yard carried on growing and rose right on up to the sky and buried the tractor out of sight.
When the masked man rode into this story on a pony I began pulling my hair out and started ranting at the grave…
That’s it, I thought, I’m going for coffee, and I’m not stopping until I get to Morocco.
But of course, when the cows came home, as they do, I had to milk them and forget all about escaping...
Image from me
