By the Grace

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2016-04-17T20_45_46-07_00

Drink the cold, unforgiving coffee

Drink it up like it’s the very last beverage you will enjoy

Before they strap you down on the gurney and take your life

For crimes you did not actually commit

We would sit there for weeks on end

Him on the computer in the dining room playing solitaire

Then out of virtually nowhere he would stand up

And start devising his next recorded manifesto

It was his escape hatch

The only thing that made any actualized sense to him

I’d be upstairs typing away like a blind chicken on his Remington

Or maybe I’d be lying on the couch in the front room stoned, reading Philip K. Dick

I’m not dropping names

No, that isn’t what this is about

And even if you gave me your name I still couldn’t fit in

By the Grace a Forever Low Man hung himself because he had nothing better to do that shambolic afternoon

Most people don’t get it and never will

They don’t understand paying tribute to a man who was the other half of my creative brain and taught me to do the work like I have six months left to live

Or maybe they refuse to accept how he exited on his own negotiate nothing terms

And me I just want some long overdue justice for all of those friends who went into a Taco Bell bathroom to never come out again

By the Grace I will find my footing and again feel the sand between my toes

You could probably care less what I’m thinking, but I’m going to tell you anyway

I’m thinking that creative zeitgeists don’t come along all that often and that when they do we better take advantage of the free electricity they give unto us like a plague of locusts

I’m thinking about that stale doughnut and how I should have dunk it into the cold, unremitting coffee and how it’s now too late as another shimmering opportunity goes up in lackadaisical smoke

Charles Cicirella

4/10/16