A Descent into Madness
But Here I Am
It tastes familiar, it feels familiar
Glass clinks, oak wood under varnish and stain
Clean and clear as the vessel full of spirits dangles from my hand
Oldies ring, “Eleanor Rigby, all the lonely people”
That was an oldie when I was a kid, it feels as old as Mozart’s Jupiter now
I feel old. I felt old then. Lost. I felt lost then.
I thought I’d found myself.
Like a beggar finds a half eaten meal in the waste bin I felt… satisfied
But as the hunger was stilled a thirst rang forth
Now I’m sitting here and quenching my thirst
With the spirits of rotten food yet my hunger it’s still upended
It tastes familiar, it feels familiar
“Is this the real life, is this just fantasy?”
“I am a poor boy. Nothing really matters to me.”
I’m the man who dies
Killed by the Queen, over and over on the radio waves.
Written in pen and imprinted on gold
Launched on the Voyager;
Propelled toward and unknown destination
With an unknown recipient
A message, in a bottle, a million miles away a trillion to go
Who are you out there across the sky waiting to hear my voice?
Was Queen given space on that 90-minutes?
If not what a shame,
Mozart Queen of the night Aria,
She’ll reach you whoever you are
Wherever in the Cosmos you stay
Away. Drifting. Like The Rocketman.
Close to me like everything, I feel it.
Fleeting rain or running shoes stomping on centuries old pavement
Women with dogs, barking as basketballs splatter on the court nearby: every day the same scene.
The sun, setting, it’s early still but late in the game.
Fuck. The worlds changed so fast
And I can’t out run it not even with words.
Yet it rushes out of me like ink from a fountain pen
Brushing letters eloquently onto parchment
Once made from herbs
Who else walked these streets,
Was close to me and wrote as I write,
Spoke as I speak.
It’s a fervor I feel.
Did they feel as I feel,
So I feel as they felt?
Groups of men play ball nearby
And I sit back again and wonder
Who I am to you.
You feel like a friend I haven’t seen in years
But I still know you and love you,
I feel your presence and always have.
The stars sing your name
The moon shines in your beauty
And the sun burns glory hallelujah
Singing praises to your soul
Don’t look, now, as the day ends and the night falls
The master he wrote to those who seek to write who think to write who dream to write, he wrote to us plainly:
“Don’t do it”
But here I am.
For you, Charles, a friend I know well
But a man I’ve yet to meet
-J
