"The October Wail"
©2016 D.J.L.
It rends the spirit and tears the
heart wall the outgoing summer wails
And resounds recursive austerity
The droning tonal chords of fall...
As they flail me from within my guitar
Leaving sharp and flat notation weals
Across my soul as I work up my vocal
Music mourning summer's passing
At Septembers wake for August though
Autumnal ghosts we all were, all are, all shall always be
Haunting the neon nightscape of every
Downtrodden and dismal urban city...
Malt liquor never tasted better than
Ice cold just cracked forty-ounces
Hitting hope parched lips on the
sixtieth degree of a mid october toast
to us The ghosts of september,
october, and november most...
Sunlight sifts through afternoon leaves
and glints off all the beautiful people
All the lonely downtown people
Shopping frantically to fend off
the ever constant existential anxiety
Which Madison Avenue depends upon
so predatorily and why man created Macy's...
They put pennies in the coffer at our feet
Homage paid to homelessness I guess
We just play to play and like anybody
worth their bones at what they do
They pay to hear you play though
Some listen in for free, others pay
A little more as if covering the
Unpaid strangers listening fee...
It's the closest thing to musical
Socialism we can achieve--our sad
Little audio theatric social commentary...
And yet most pass by unwaware of what's
Really happening here...I see the smiles
And conspiratorial winks of '60s children
Passers by as they connect spiritually with
A time and place long passed in America
That had a simple value a simplicity
But they called them dirty hippies and
Some redneck rode up in a pickup truck
And unloaded a twelve-gauge shotgun
On Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda
And blew the summer of love to
Smithereens...really though methinks
It was the disillusionment of
Vietnam as we watched newsreels
of the Massacre at Mai Lai and
lost our national innocence...well
History repeats itself and today
We see the webcasts from Aleppo
and the Suicide Bombers in
Afghanistan and though our
National innocence may have been
Sacrificed long ago-today we are
Selling our actual national soul;
For petroleum, for diamonds, for gold,
and for artificial numbers typed into
existence into some computer terminal
at some non-descript bank and all those
numbers represent is the slave labor
Of a generation and the higher the
Digit, the higher the likeliness
That we will kill over them...
A rust colored leaf falls from
One of the sole remaining oaks in
The center of the city...as it
Drifts lazily towards the concrete
Ecosystem I am reminded of how all
Things that shine in this world
Inevitably rust and thus the current
Predicament we find humanity in...
Our race is oxidizing with the
Corrosive human oxidants of greed,
Blind ambition, lust, pride, and
A zillion more than the seven
Which we have yet to even name...
We are rusting, and we are in the autumn
of our existence as a species...
Wearing tank tops and short shorts
Like despite all of the signs of the
times; we refuse to believe that a
Long dark winter is coming...
The birds know-I see a gaggle of geese
Honking in flying vee southbound
and it strikes me as a very zen
representation of the circle of life
And how far removed we are from it...
When once we as humans were migratory
Creatures who killed only what we could
eat and even then utilized every part of
The Animal...And we gathered foods
Seasonally according to our migrations...
And I feel this Primal Scream welling
up inside of my chest...I am furious
With humanity, I am enraged, I am envious of
The canadian geese and I am ashamed of
Everything that I am and that I was
raised to become-a senselss consumer
In a consumerist world built
Upon Capitalism-a theocratic world society
Whose deity is currency and whose
Religion is the acquisition of material wealth...
I am a nine-digit number in a
Country full of nine-digit numbers
Whose socially dictated aspiration is
To accumulate as many of those
Non-existent computer terminal
Numbers as I can muster with all
of my God given talent and intellect
And to turn those numbers into even
More creature comforts and in turn
More numbers and on and on until
I am reduced to an absolute existential
metaphysical big fat fucking ZERO.
Well, I reject that right here and right now
And I feel a sense of ease and comfort
and autumnal tranquility wash over me immediately...
I was terrible at that shell game anyways-
After all, I am sitting here on a
Downtown sidewalk selling my talent for
Pennies...which to all the passing nameless
Automatons is the most inane counter-intuitive
Pathetic path of all...Poor little homeless
Guitar playing junkpoet...
My spirit is light and full of laughter now
Because I get what they can never get...
Life the greatest painting shines on
Before me a manic conglomeration of
Blood and oil and sweat and spirit and
Life and The spark of the Divine Architect
Who created it all-this wholly unholy riddle
That is both Holy and sacrosanct
While simultaneously filthy and and wild:
It is that mystery of life....
The spirit is inviolate and possessed
Of immutable laws that govern it so
That which seems to be is never
as it seems and that which is seen
is wholly unseen...
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
Blessed are the meek,
Blessed are the peacemakers,
And certainly most blessed are the
Homeless boys and girls who
Excercise their beautific talents freely
And share them freely and
Give freely of themselves to one another
and Migrate under the starry night sky
From season to season and city to city
Finding hearts to touch and souls to heal
Along the way...They may be the least in
The kingdom of Mammon but they are first
In the fiefdom of the heavenly host
My gifts this wondrous autumn day are
Far from squandered, they are excercised
With divine grace and love and perfect
Imperfection, for that Inviolable Divinity
Who sang us forth a perfect fifth into
The nothingness of the void, and
Created the quintessential universal song;
He wrote his opus with divine skill and
Holy paradox...
It is only in emptying ourselves that we
Become full
It is only in rejecting the noise of the world
that we can truly Hear the spirit and what it
Is so desperately trying to tell us...
It is only in giving away
That we actually recieve...
It is only through sacrfice
That we can know and give love....
It is only through suffering
That we can experience joy...
It is only through dying that
We can ever truly live...
And it is only by getting back to our
Intended design that we as a species
Can ever find peace...
And so I smile as I strike the next chord
Expertly...it's a dharmic chord I've struck
And it rings through in imperfect perfection
As my voice rises barely able to conceal
My autumn joy-for I am exactly where I was
Meant to be in this moment--
And what I have, my talents and my art
They are free from me to you
as they should ever be
for this is the natural order of things
So if you have ears to hear
And eyes to see, keep them peeled
Listen intently and look fearlessly
Upon my haggard countenance;
For I am the October Wail
and the Autumnal notes mend the Spirit
And stitch up the broken-hearted
Austerity is over as it is time for
Life and love and laughter
Even after summer ends....