Catalog #67
A tattered coat upon a stick…
He is hanging onto nothing today.
It is so hard to grasp.
So easy to fall from grace.
Only nooses hold tight.
Rifles spit out the truth.
The world is an ambush,
cunningly set and sprung.
Many ambushes actually.
Haphazard bullets strike his life.
He has walked wounded a long time.
Dragging self along so long.
Dragging his loneliness.
A man of no fortune.
No name to come.
No help ever arrives.
All his anxieties have come of age.
His contradictions come home to roost.
Vials of medication crowd his desk.
Some he takes. Forgets the rest.
Everything he loved dispersed.
He has been everywhere.
No blanks left on maps.
He has read so many books.
He has learned a pittance.
A mind of fragments.
A collage of broken pieces.
Head full of useless information.
Too much time spent on Art.
Too little on the beating heart.
Footsteps echo emptiness.
Stuck in silent rented rooms.
Speaking to indifferent strangers.
Ghostly wraiths on a vacant stage.
Spirits of a fading Age.
Trudging through random days.
No map. No sign. No compass.
All coherence gone.
The Great Chain broken.
No more words to say.
His muse fled to another man’s bed.
No more durable enchantments.
No more sweet voices in his head.
The wind blows ever colder.
Hour by hour, day by day,
The living world slips away.
