Here I sit

In the corridors of knowledge

Where others have sat

Before me

Where others will sit

After me

From different walks of life

Teenagers

Young adults

Older folks

Parents

Professionals

The curious

Each with their own

Unique story

Recorded within these walls

And now

I add mine

August 2012

Walls obscured with despairs of those

who came before us. The Shadow Angel

greeted us. She spoke of who came before,

to pour their absent spirituality, humanity, life

into the bulwarks of the house. Anguished spirits

entombed to wallow in agonies they experienced in life.

Lost friends, lost loves, lost family,

failed dreams, broken marriages,

squandered prospects, endless loneliness,

every torment was experienced by

those who enter this dwelling.

The air was oppressive, crushing

in like an unyielding obstruction

forcing the air from our lungs.

Light could not penetrate the walls,

or our eyes as we stood in its ebony halls.

How, someone exclaimed,

does one rid this place of all this pain?

The Shadow Angel proclaimed

there must be a cleansing and purifying purge.

Only then the spirits can move on.

Oh, how do we release them? they bellowed

Then a single tear born out

of sympathy and compassion fell;

the surroundings slightly and suddenly

changed. We all began to weep

for the miserable dead,

cleansing with water,

purifying with salt,

made up our tears.

One drop rapidly became a tsunami.

The wave crashed and pummeled

against the walls with vehement vigor.

Then, it was gone.

They started to place picturesque

blissful memories upon the walls:

first snow of winter, first flowers of spring

holding a newborn baby, the bliss of a kiss.

The Shadow Angel expressed these walls would

only absorb the sadness; that joy flowed off

them as if they were coated in paraffin.

And they watched as those images

melting down, disappearing into the ether.

Then what was it all for? they cried.

The Shadow Angel declared, ‘Tis the House of Sorrow.

Its purpose is for those to lay down their pain

when there is no one else to annul it.

Tis here they wait till someone arrives

to wash it away for them.

 I nodded to our angelic host,

then walked out the door. She called out;

do you not wish to imbrue these walls?

I replied no.

I got what I came for, to see if I

could resist temptation. I can let go

of my professional frustrations,

my solitude from others, my imagined failures.

Yes I, like those before me,

and those who will come after

will bring our personal burdens into those walls,

and they remain as they are;

fixed, in stasis, unchanging.

November 2014

I was born the year

The Fab Four disbanded

and the Voodoo Child died.

It was a cursed year,

to those who survived it,

but many more decades

would surpass it.

The formative days of my youth,

existed in the shadowed aftermath

of Love and Peace, reverberations

of combat torn Boomers.

“Stairway to Heaven” filled our kitchen

and “Smoke on the Water” riffed

its way into melodic infamy.

The harmonious turmoil matched

my ever shifting residential

situations, while humanity

sought to recover its path.

Puberty was punctuated

by the Birmingham five, asking

the question on everyone’s mind

“Please, please tell me now,

Is there something I should know?”

Little did we discern, in the synthesizer

packed prosperity party, in our neon haze

as “New Romantics looking for the

TV sound”, we should have pushed

harder for those answers. They

could have prevented the present

problems, by revealing the core.

Speed metal and grunge ushered

in the arrival of parenthood,

and the grey flannel days.

Sleepless nights, soiled diaper,

endless bottles and clothes

to wash. Life as the decade’s

mirror. Music acting as commentary

on the letdown of aspirations,

for me and my fellow Gen X’ers.

Punctuated by a Seattle suicide,

the product of heroin and shotgun rage.

 And as we see some outward appearance

of attainment over the vista,

tragedy befalls a rocky mountain town.

Self-proclaimed messiahs in trench coats

appearing amidst a storm of gunfire.

Surrendered to their selfish deities, blood

must spill for justice to be served.

Omega, the Antichrist Superstar, martyred,

crucified on his Holy Wood to compensate

for their sins. I looked upon my progeny

and felt the first of the fear

for their future that flourished

in years to follow.

Now I exist in an empty household

while the loudest vulgar voices

in the room roar of empty values,

empty journalist principles,

empty political promises, all sold

to the highest bidder in the clearance

sale on the soul of America. I forsake

the hi-fi, like those who come over

its airwaves had forsaken musical

art for the money grab. Video

did not kill the radio star; thy slayer’s

name is capitalism. Empty tunes

drowning out the substance still

struggling to rediscover its volume.

November 2014