When there is no warmth from the sun or when the kindness from the hands of loved ones are gone away or too far to touch and too distant to hear from, and when the room is empty, the crowd is gone and the attention dwindled to an emptiness, there is no way to avoid the reflection in the mirror or the absence of company.
So on I go with my fair share of introspetive therapy.
I think it is important to experience this. I think pain is important, and likewise, I would never wish this or my experience on anyone.
I would never hope for anyone to find themselves alone. I do not wish anyone this kind of thing or to be locked in a cage or separated and isolated in one prison or another.
Justice is due to the right justice.
And none of this is about any of that.
I would never wish emotional imprisonment or the physical abandonment of being “thrown away” or put away in segregation, alone, and companionless, as in the type of loneliness that even the roaches or the mites and bugs would be a welcomed interaction.
No one should feel so alone nor should anyone fear this kind of lonesomeness. No one should abide by this fear and assume to acquiesce or accept the wrong company over no company at all.
No one should know the personal or the emotional and moral injuries of having life fall out from beneath them.
At the same time, these pains are great teachers and motivators..
I woke from a dream last night.
I was on a small stage.
The theater was empty and dark.
I was sitting on a stool in the center of the stage.
All was mainly black.
The light was on me.
The smokiness from a cigarette lifted from an ashtray that sat on another stool beside me.
I miss smoking sometimes.
There was a brown bottle of anything or something beside the ashtray, which I suppose this was my drink.
Of course.
The mic was on a tripod with an arm and a handle which came from the side, almost as if I was a piano-less and siting like a piano player with no piano and only the hopes that my poems were enough.
Ah, the crowd.
But there was no crowd.
Maybe this was more spiritual and more meaningful and more metaphoric than just a regular or typical dream.
For the record though, I don’t do readings
I never have and perhaps I never will.
I think about it
I used to want to do them
But no
I remember when I was somewhere downtown, close to a familiar spot where I walked on an afternoon with an intention of “feeling” something, if you know what I mean.
I wanted to feel more than just what it means to be an outsider looking in.
I wanted to know what it means to have an “us” or a “we” and everything and everyone else was a “they” or “them.”
I was near Frank O’Hara’s place.
O’Hara died back in 1966.
He was a great poet.
O’Hara died from a ruptured liver due to an accident. He was struck by a beach jeep on Fire Island, New York.
And again, I never knew much about his personal life or his choices or his politics or his sexuality and nor did I care.
I only cared about his poetry.
I remember the first time I learned about the poem, “Having a Coke With You.
O’Hara wrote this poem before I was born and still, more than 60 years later, O’Hara still inspires poetry.
Or if anything; I can say Frank O’Hara inspires me.
Either way, I remember being down by his spot on 14th Street. I was thinking and regarding how The Basketball Diaries poet, Jim Carroll, wrote about the hopeful chance of running into him.
I get that.
And I can dig it too
What an amazing coloration that might have been.
I used to pass these small theaters when I was in my 20’s.
I’d go in and sit down to watch some of the slam poets recite their dreams.
Or sometimes, I’d go in and watch the showcases, like tiny plays with deep plots and a meaning, and somehow—as amazing and deep as they seemed, no one was famous and no cared.
They played just to play and acted just to act.
I call this out and submit that this is what people will do for the love of their game.
As for me, I have enough unheard and unnoticed challenges in my daily life.
This is why I never dared the stage or allowed myself to play the game and be meaningless.
However, there are other reasons why I never dared to read my poems.
The first reason is a young and childhood phobia. This is the fear that brings me back to my stuttering years,
This is when I would be forced to read out loud in classrooms.
This was brutal.
I read something like this:
th-the-the . . . . qui-qui-quiii-quick . . . .
br-bruh-bruh-brownnn. . . .fuh-fuh-fuh-fox . . .
ju-ju-jumped . . .oh-oh-over . . . thuh-the . . .
luh-la-lazy . . . . duh-duh-dog.
I just cringed writing this to you.
I felt my insides grind every muscle with contempt and resentment and self-hate because yes, that was me.
I never had faith in myself.
I never had confidence and how could I?
Kids at school laughed at me.
I remember kids calling me “sta-sta-stupid!”
I was small and weak and puny and worse, I believed these things were true.
I believed that I was destined to die and rightfully so because obviously, there had to be something wrong with me.
It is painful to expose myself and yet, I have to do this.
(a few tears welled in my eyes just now)
There was only one person in my previous life that made me comfortable about this.
She . . .
There was only one person who pushed me and I trusted this person and yet, there were too many lies and too much dishonesty and eventually, all the warmth was doused by the fires of a unfortunate truth.
I lost that life and yes, I agree, —no one can lose what is truly theirs
And so, I can never lose what is truly mine and that life (or she) was never mine to begin with.
I know
There was never really an “us” or “we” and more, everyone was “they” or “them” to me.
And so it went and so it goes no and so hence; I go forward.
I move onward like a soldier from a lost war with my armor still beaten and a flag without a country.
I still carry y heart and my love for my country as prevalent as ever.
I will never surrender my flag and nor will I ever give up on my vanished castle.
I will never forfeit my love and still; despite my growth and advances and the improvements, —I will never do a reading.
At the same time, I don’t have to anymore.
The world is not the same and the theaters are not my dream anymore.
This . . .
You . . .
My drive and my desire
These are my dreams now.
I woke up from a dream last night and wrote down what I could remember.
I was there, not too far from the Beekman Hotel where Edgar Allan Poe is regarded because the original structure before the hotel was connected to writers and publishers and New York’s literary history.
I was somewhere closeby
I was on stage in a small theater.
The theater was round or cylindrical with black walls and black empty seating and the lights were on me.
No one else was there.
Perhaps this was my own soliloquy to myslf
Or maybe this was a rehearsal for something bigger or grand.
Maybe this was me preparing for the next stage in my life, like, say, when all else is live and real and in-person.
Us and We and They and Them
(you know?)
I tried to write down what I could remember.
and so
I think my poem went something like this—
Sometimes . . .
. . . the pressure ad the weight
and the options get so heavy.
The world makes my legs fold
and the floor drops out
from beneath my feet.
How an anyone stand the weight
or fight back
when the ground moves too fast
and you fall down
while running in place?
(I breathed deep and exhaled)
The sky looks very different
from the flat of your back after you’ve been hit hard
and knocked out.
The room looks different too
All the people, all the places
and all the things Momma warned you about
are true
And the fucked-up part about it
is all you can do is bleed
or lay there,
dying like a fallen deer
after the truck slammed it to the road
And you think wow—
laying there dying
“I never knew the double yellow lines
were so thick and high
from the flat surface
of the blacktop pavement.“
Tell me—
Who the fuck would want that
for their last conscious thought?
it’s nothing, really
Nothing at all.
this is just a quick or poetic thought
from an ex-communicated burnout
(or junkie)
also known as another kid
(or casualty)
who died alive in a little town
called East meadow, Long Island
End Dream
No.
I suppose this soldier will never take his armor off.
The fight is not over yet.
So, I will never surrender.
I will always remember
and I will never stop, quit
or give in
Not until my flag is placed
and the love for my country is returned to its rightful place
(in my heart)
