prisoners haunt the hallways
opportunities regretted
twists turns past lives
I didn’t want to leave
only dry hollow husks
blown reluctant to participate in my one and only treasure.
I lived in a time
when women sat beside me whispering on back porch landing’s
interrupted by neighbours running down the stairs
hands wet beneath Danskin purple skirts
she spoke of how in past or future it didn’t matter which
I was her child she the mother
knowing I would go on to crucifixion
suckled me with saltwater glistening breasts mingling milk
into my hungry hot house mouth.
were there ever other places other days,
freedom? confidence?
a mouth full of meat?
a belief anything was possible?
I stood with someone once at midnight
not just a time but the place
a place where midnight born and lives out in each of us.
The place of my mid night?
sometime in October out there by the water
breath rising in smoke, dew soaked shivering pirate breath kisses
I called you cypress by moon light,
buccaneer beauty I chose
there in the place of my own midnight
you but not you rather the you of what you ever were.
I called you Guinevere by moonlight
lay down with you there
in the place of our own midnight
among cold Halloween coarse grass
surrounded by stolen beer bottles
a dwindling hedge barely separated from the street.
The only promise I ever kept?
never a mathematician or carpenters’ wife.
I have not even now more years than miles can tell – broken that promise.
Sometimes I forget I made it,
sometimes I forget to congratulate myself for not breaking it,
sometimes I try to barter it, threaten to turn my back if somebody doesn’t pretty soon pay me for it.
But I am not the famous rebel, not the muse’s figure head –
quietly steadily I am only the keeper of my own promise
born from misguided Madonna’s introduced by white women to the place of my own midnight
I have never stopped; I have never turned back.
That’s all I have ever really done with all that treasure which was my life.
no big deal but still, something real. no surrender, no slipping,
no disparity of one who broke the only promise ever truly made.
Yes, still writing. Yes, still the poet.
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there will be a time when I walk alone no possibility of interruption, no sense of anything but wonder. ready to go anywhere – I will alone step upon a beach of star dust, a twilight evening morning without distractions of any sun rise. Body resembling translucent moons encircled with rings like Jupiter silver oh you know what I mean.
to walk alone totally alone; the great adventure that. every step a holy ground, every step unknown places beckoning without distraction. the only one around, me walking without reluctance across the universe. And when like some great invisible hand reaches out cupping me as if my whole body but a sweet lovers cheek, the last eyes I see before I know of eyes no longer? my own reflected back across an endless sky as if in kissing my own self one brief momentary glimpse of the Krishna that is and always has been me.
No longer afraid, narcissism the enduring aspect of the world in the jingle jangle mornings I have followed and loved only you.
.
Mr. Tambourine Man. B. Dylan, Bob Dylan Live 1975. Play it while I die if I die quietly or lingering otherwise at my funeral.
