…but I wanted him
to get fat….
I wanted him
to try the blues
one more time,
to do a country-rock
album…
some shitty
solo
project.
I wanted him
to re-embrace
the poet
within.
I just wanted
that he not die,
not snuff-out
that light
singing
from inside
his darkness.
I would love him
fat…
bloated,
and
still giving.
How long must I wait for brief moments of unaltered euphoria? Longer now as time goes on. Landmarks of prior moments litter my memories: Birth of my child; saturated with sound at a concert…. Too few now. In my youth I lived bathed in euphoria, like an endless desert sun… baking my soul with mind rattling consciousness. I owned the world… or a piece of it. The desert is still here… but that sun is harsh and that euphoria, the constant periods of joy, are few and unoften. I am either numb or drifting off.
In the dream the end-times had come in the form of zombies… and society was losing. I had a shotgun, of course, and the remnants of the army needed all the hands they could get. The only remaining officer was a chaplain. As he handed me a box of shells, he pointed to a larger box, full of the same, and said, “You’d better hold this door for us, and get right with the Lord.” I glanced around, the hallway was crowded with desperate faces. He turned to go, I grabbed his arm and spun him back. “The Lord? “ I said, with indignation, “People are dying, and you’re worried about the Lord?” He looked at me with eyes burnt by endless waking terror and said, “People are dying, and it’s the dead who are doing the killing… of course I’m worried about the Lord.” I chambered a shell and watched him leave. I turned, to the heaving door that seperated sunrise from sunset… Then my alarm clock chimed and that world slid quietly away
All the great ones are dead. I know I have said as much before, but it keeps coming back to me. They have left us, all we can do is remember. John Bonham, just now, working that bass drum pedal… good times bad times… can’t happen again not by him, not by his hand (or anyone else’s, for that matter). The greats that have lingered on have done so to their own detriment. Long enough for us to miss them in their prime, but still present now in their meager denouement. Those who have left too early gave us a gift: a clear dividing line. We know they were great, we know will never see it again, and we know we miss them. We know we miss them.
Ink (flows, stains). 