8 months and 4 states later, I find myself in California
pelted by an all-pervasive sun,
surrounded by sentient palms, alien in form
in the distance, the royal ocean beckons, a blue Queen
crashing into my consciousness with the tides of her turning
I watch the gulls and pelicans lift and fall,
in between the breakers, fishing for silvery answers to an instinct
It is what perhaps, led me here, to this wandering,
traipsing from coast to coast on a diet of adrenaline and dreams
seeking some kind of salvation
Fishing for the restored bounty of my soul,
I threw my line out into the void, time after time, turning up clues
Oh, there have been ugly nights…
and incandescent discoveries aplenty,
as I have turned the page on each day,
trying to escape my thoughts of you.
It is with some dark amusement,
now reflecting on the past three years I have spent in devotion
anguished and elated on the rocky road of our love,
at last proved to be… fragile as a sickly child,
choked on the poisoned hook of idle gossip from my foremost enemy.
At long last, I can give up the ghost of my screaming madness
At long last, my vigil is abolished by this final banal excuse
pointing, yet again, to what I blind fool I have been…
I’ll raise my voice alongside these burning mountains,
consumed by bright flames, stretching across the sky
And burn the memory of my headstrong passion
until the sky is draped in black smoke
howling like a rabid wolf,
my laughter will ring out for the waste of it all
HAHAA!!!! it was all such a glorified waste, all such a lie….
and this clarity will consume the foolhardy mountain
which, was steadfast as my love, patient and willing to be
always, your resting place, your highest peak
but, kneel now in humility, black faced and charred.
Stripped of life. Reduced to wasteland.
This journey is at last, complete and I am no longer steadfast
no longer the mount, unmoved by travesty,
no more the prevailing testament of undying love.
At least not for you.
I shall be as the wind, body and soul
searching on wings, for the fragments of my heart
which, I sent out in letters and poetry, all addressed to…
I shall rest only in the arms of God at night
and walk the holy Earth from end to end,
murmuring prayers for my soul’s wholeness
Prayers of forgiveness and mercy,
for something new to love,
I will pray until my heart is full again.
For now it is empty, forsaken, as ever……
Besieged by the triviality you claim excuses your silence….
proffered as a beggar’s meager crumbs,
oh, I have feasted on these rotted morsels for so long…
My enemy sought to part us and now
I cannot help but, to laugh….
I see how all the pain I have known and endured,
was caused by my own hand,
by giving more and accepting less.
All hail, the dark comedian!
He comes smiling with pointed teeth.
And I am dancing with him, hand in hand.
For your claims are empty, your love a dime store postcard never sent
And amidst the California wildfires, I am in my element-
at last freed from the prison of my illusion.
And I walk away laughing from the wreckage of it all.