Raymond Soulard, Jr. New Songs (for Kassandra) - The ...

59
“Thou canst prove there is water, hold up a slopping vessel to
each querying eye! Canst thee also prove there is hope? What
bloom serves thine metaphor? What hero, what quest? Shall any
unending howl succeed thine test & fill thine countless sheets
with their first true word?” bellows Dr. Arnold T. Knickerbocker as he hurls his
cane & himself at my scribbling form seated at the bar.
Atop me his breath whiskey-fouled & desparately weary, he speaks anew in
sorrowful puffs of words:
“Go, thou. Go. Leave here but a finger or a swatch of skin
but go.”
“Where?” I grunt, more interested than I can understand.
“Where the charts & scriptures leave off. What they
cannot or do not speak of. What they cannot or do not speak of.
Dreams, sand, ocean. Falling space. Thrusting light. A pen
writing its man”
I wake up & raise my head from bar to the cries & cheers of the gathered crowd.
“We’re going to the Super Bowl!” he hears different voices chortle. On the TV the
New England football Patriots have beaten 24-17 the Pittsburgh Steelers & are bound for
Super Bowl XXXVI in New Orleans.
I get hugged & several pints slop my way from sunny drunken souls who don’t know
I’ve left behind my taste for alcohol.
No matter: I see Jim Reality & he knows & he smiles & he glints
“May I present humble liquid refreshment offerings to mine lord King Thirst the
First?”
“You may” he gleams merrily—
Rebecca returns from seeing Dr. Arnold T. Knickerbocker to his nap on the couch of the
old manager’s office in back.
She sits next to me sometimes hugged jolly by the revelers, her laughter bespeaking
her delight—
“We keep going, Reb”
“We come back too. Remember that. It’s important.” I nod honestly.
“He told me to go beyond the charts & scriptures. To where they leave off.”
“Told us to go beyond”
“Yes”
“I’m going with you, Ray, wherever & always.”
I nod. Ever & always.
“Never was a choice.”
Something from a book once held, lived: “it was scary to have someone to love, but
it was also very fine”—
how complex it has become to serve my Art, my Muse—
The Cenacle | 59 | October 2006