Kierkegaard, a Danish layman, wrote for long hours into the night, bending ever so slightly, swaying as a weeping willow, gently in the breeze, rooted on the banks of a river—an old story told hundreds of times. A man sleeping peacefully; fresh rainbow trout, still alive, tied to a line, lying in the brook: Like my earliest dreams: soft summer light falling onto a backwoods creek, more magnificent than the king’s dining hall chandelier. I have never been to the king’s quarters…but I have been told stories. For me, the river is enough. I like my dirty denim, muddied all-stars, disheveled hair, and violent blue eyes, whilst resting under an old willow tree who tells tales from two-thousand years past. Kierkegaard long sighed into eternity, in the clarity of bright flashing, from the rays of the sun, a dazzling flickering reflection in the rushing waters.
Whisper. Shhhh…..We are on a pond. The canoe is fragile. Fragile is the wrong word here. The canoe is handcrafted, by my best friend’s father. Shhhhh……I saw him chiseling in the woodshop. Meticulous, steady, perfect precision. It is a beautiful color. Stained mahogany: a deep cherry: the color of my first guitar. I slept with her often. Her name was Martin. C&F Martin Guitar. I fucked her, and broke her into a thousand pieces. I threw her into the garbage: I scattered her bones, her blood trailed on the roadside: a very steep hill where from a child might fall to his death. God forbid that one of us might stumble. Oh, there is a stairwell near the playground. Just on the other side of the fence, there is an overpass. Broken bottle: bloooooooooood. Some young men were yelling and chasing and cursing at us. We will get baseball bats and let them know WHO THE FUCK YOU ARE FUCKING WITH NOW. There is a carcass with flies and bugs crawling in it devouring its rotten flesh.
The pond is still and in the city there is no rest. It is possible that the king’s estate is wondrous, as all have said. However, to make my way there, I must walk over the bridge where young ones have fallen, through the playground where jesters are born, tip-toe through neighborhoods peering in windows, up that steep hill where my first love’s blood was spilled, into the forest (and over the brook, all the way to grandmother’s house, for freshly baked cookies, and raspberries, and strawberries, and grandpa’s good country music) and wander down a highway with no beginning and no end, in the middle of a desert with no life but a single hallucinating ventriloquist. And if I have life left in me then, if my gaze falls on The House of The King, if finally I make my way to his door: certainly I will drop dead and remember no more. I enjoy sitting on the banks of a river in the twilight whistling an old song from my childhood, dreaming of the present.
Standing in a puddle
I let the cool rain water soak into my shoes
Drowsy dispassion, whatever it is, I stare into the echo of ripples
Head hung, hands in my pockets
Water drips from the brim of my cap
I see a few cars drive by. It feels lazy, slow, hazy, unusual
A blurred moment in time
Blue inside, I spill out violet, tiring
Willowy women sway softly in my eyes
Lulling me away, off to distant hillsides, off into a cemetery,
Whispering eternity