Evening glory. Illness lingers on. I lean against the day. The sky has almost ended. But I have not grown weary of this world. I will meet the spring this year, and move on.
Clouds drip their ashes, black and dark, and silent. ‘Dance to the music’ you said But this is not a fantasy, where children play on snow covered hills. And words dance with delight.
It is a place for pale moons, and a past worn well. With people sobbing to the sounds of ancient mandolins. To catch happiness, you have to be content with what you have Even then, there is still no mercy for the kind.
At the rivers side, the feeling of silence. The sun, pale and sick cries wild. Not caring what the onlookers might think. My desires unheard, I don’t know where to go. I am worth more than this.
I got sick, but don’t worry not with covid. But you stopped caring long ago. I got sick with a sadness that corrupts. So I wept alone on the dream. But you stopped dreaming long ago. I got sick, reading Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn. Do you know who they are? I got sick….
Sleep has long since stopped expecting me. I write into this day, and into a new day. It’s not like the problems and the pain go away when I sleep. Like a Dylan song title, this wonderland of fast money is in my head all the time. I try to sleep, but my thoughts move oddly. Like lab rabbits stunned by drugs, given by doctors deprived of their naps, and internet connections.
A half-buried rock, you called me old-fashioned. With my 1962 smith-corona typewriter, deluxe version. My MP3 player, with sounds from Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five – Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.
But this is no grey time. This fenced-off narrow space, of strange and primitive ways. Holds a life that flows steadily onward. I look at my own body now, with eyes no longer, drunk or subdued. With words, that sometimes cry of art and love. And I see now there is an extension, and a road still to find.
There’s that part after Emily Dickinson writes “Alone, I cannot be” When I think of you. And the word ‘Alone’ changes shape in the sky. So many have tried. ‘Well done’ says Bukowski And raises his glass.
And I think, something will come. Not the snake or the idea of god. But the way you dress in nothing but the light. I am sitting waiting for this. On a plain wooden seat.
To fulfil the night, we bleed for the same sadness, and the same joy. We breathe each other’s breath. And I drink deep from your perfumed kisses. Butterfly, or falling leaf – you will shiver under my caress. There is nothing as beautiful, across ten thousand lives.
A Wandering Poet 