On the horse,
a pair of lenses

swollen to fit the nose.
Handsome in silver.

The frames slick with promise
that this attempt wouldn’t embarrass.

I stood there embarrassed.
I suddenly had scant idea what was required

but I swore this attempt would not fail.
I swore this attempt would matter.

It didn’t matter. The horse
attempted closure. I did not.

We two were alone with our failure
since all I could do was fail.

We stood, false-lonely, loose-limbed
on her part; I wept tight and shaking

with unease and frank horror.
I could not, would not.

Did you know this would happen?
I did not, should not.

As ordinary as shattered glass?
As customary as any mistake?

I should not, would not.
The horse and I stood there

in the stall until someone came
and took us back to our places.

I lay down on my bed
and wept till I knew I wasn’t wrong

and this was the way of things,
how space and the universe were supposed

to unfold and that being right
would take a long time.

The horse doffed her glasses,
shook her head. Wondered

about the taste of sugar as if
it was supposed to be sweetness.

It was supposed to be.
Anyone knew that.

“It’s too late, she’s gone.”  

I watch an old clip on YouTube. Clapton without Duane on the Johnny Cash Show, country-blues riff on Brownie the legendary Stratocaster that sold for half a million dollars decades ago.

“It’s too late, she’s gone.”  

I watch Bobby Whitlock on furious background vocals and piano. I watch killer Jim Gordon on drums. Carl Radle on bass, probably on smack as well — and Clapton on Brownie and blues and Patti Boyd and yes, heroin.  Thinking of Johnny Cash offscreen in a ruffled shirt.  

“It’s too late, she’s gone.”

I’m digging the song, if not the era. Nostalgia is lost on me. I like living in the moment and half or more of the people I have known are dead and don’t live in that moment or any moment now.

Classic rockers are good, are bad.  It takes all kinds to make a moment. This is a moment I am making by myself in the living room before dawn — Jim Gordon is dead, Carl Radle is dead, Johnny Cash too. We do still have Whitlock. I try to pretend we don’t have Clapton.

My guitar hand is gone but my nostalgia for it needs to be kept at bay.

Sunrise coming, this hemisphere’s feeling so cold, feels like the world closing in.  

Tell me it’s not too late. 

The floor is always lava.  My feet are always burning. No one ever knows what’s happening. No one else feels the heated floor, the measured melting steps I have to take.

I’m going to tell of what that’s like, but not today.  Today I have no choice but to keep it to myself because to explain it I’d have to open up and let the flames out of my lungs to which they’ve risen — up my legs the fire goes and there is a burning within.

It’s clear to me that some people like to read about the burning. It’s clear to me that I’m their choice to feed them the fire. It’s clear to me that they think my fire can counter theirs. It’s clear to me they are wrong.

The floor beneath me is always lava, and with that awareness as public knowledge now, I will keep my mouth as closed as I can until I can no more. 

I finished my term today and when I stepped out the door afterward I looked up at the sky and thought about that being a form of graduation.  Reflected on what I’d learned.  Tried to choose a life’s work. Tried to think about who I wanted to be.

I finished my term today and the final grades are in.  I seem to have passed all the critical tests, the crucial exams, 
the certifications for the New Life. I looked up at the sky and reflected on what I was supposed to do — what shone upon me now, what I attracted unto my self under the grand roof of Heaven.

I finished my term today and realized I had no idea what to do next. Reflected on direction, considered standing still for all the rest of time.  Instead I looked up and began to rise.  Ceremonial to the end. The writer of ritual endings. The knife wielder, my hands moving above my head. The only tassel to toss is the one on the scabbard of the athame.

This is how a long semester ends — uncertainty and a fall back into superstition. 
This is how I discuss my lost youth. This is how the aged degenerate.
This is how it’s done. This is how we do it.

What I see ahead is condensed to a pinpoint. Tunnel vision, but so much more narrow. Bright all around except at the end of the tunnel and there at the end, a massive darkness. Not that I would call what’s all around me now as I head into it is fully lit. More like a haze from a fire. All around the dark point at the end is dim light that is only bright by comparison.  

“Everyone is fighting a battle you cannot see,” says a poster quoting fifteen different people. Everyone’s battle is out there in the haze you cannot penetrate. Light’s useless. Sound matters and everyone’s battle sounds like bad pop music from this end of the tunnel. 

What I see ahead is a gun barrel in the guerrilla night. I’m traveling down through it. Looking forward to roar upon exit, and then silence. Looking forward to full light. The tunnel expanding in a rush to a landscape. Everyone at war but for a few.

I go into the unblinding as if I’m now a stone tumbling in rapids along a hard bed. Who can say how smooth this will make me?  All the polishing, the wearing down until I myself become a point.

A light at a tunnel’s end. Now-brilliant haze all around.

Sounds of battle becoming dance.