Democrat, Illinois - The ElectroLounge

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“This is different. You’re going to see something. It’s big & magical. I can’t tell you
about it right. Come on!”
Dylan goes with his friend after grabbing his bag, with an extra shirt, & some of his
little mushrooms.
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lxxxv.
Come back to the dingy cafeteria, its bad food, its lowly comfort.
Wondering at the perpetual vagabond in me, the dirt-dog, running the streets,
hurting obscurely & studying this for any importance it might bear, any little importance I
should know & keep.
I’ve been writing these stories most of my life, lives, life after life, they connect
among them, trace through in ways I treasure & cannot quite know—
The street in me, the coffeehouse, the late high desperate nights I do not eschew—
they keep fresh in me because little else piles to their worth—
I come to sorryass joints like these to meet my ghosts & bear wisps of them away
with me—to remember close no matter the years—
reach back through the tentacles & manacles to flashes of sweetness, sugar high
moments among the sad murk—
Nobody knows. I look at others & do not know. I wish to think it otherwise but
rarely do—
The hours run out on this & onto my cleaner ones, live warmth, some kindness &
protection—
Fierce flavors of all my years blend arching, careening, perpetual—
lxxxvi.
“Pipe?”
I take it & welcome the smoke-shaped spirits within, feel words & images jostle
loose, feel the depths crackle
“The murk sing?”
“yah”
“heh. You so want to word the wordless, don’t you?”
“Why else bother to try?”
“Think you can do it perpetually?”
“I dunno.”
“But you won’t stop.”
“No. There’s always more to say.”
“Or bottle up the old anew?”
“Yah. Maybe.”
“How long have we been discussing this?”
“At least a decade. Never stops being interesting.”
“For long.”
87
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