Icarus ignored his father's warnings and ventured too near the sun with his wings of wax.
There can never be a phoenix-like rebirth without an incineration to create the ash pile from which a firebird can take flight.
I'm taking the cues the world is giving me and figuring out what to do next. I'm shining with hope and I need to be sure there's no clouds obscuring the glow. Here is the chronicle of a mad, mad week...
And keep your eyes open in your neighborhood coffee shop- soon I will be distributing the first copies of the Mikey Golightly primer, which will be available for free in places that planted the seeds for this literary fruit.
------------------------------
You are drawing powerful forces towards you,
as a magnet, or the sun.
Power and greed, romance and lust,
now at your fingers as if strings on a harp,
play the tune gently, with melody,
tune this world to the lyrics of McCartney
and the heart of the Clash
no lessons needed to sing this eternal song.
---------------------
Or was it all in your mind? A mistaken shuttle
you hopped aboard, but it wasn't your route
and you didn't have the clothes or the language
to survive when you disembarked at the end of the line.
You live in a neighborhood now from where
you cannot venture into her forbidden streets,
you wear the policeman's uniform when all you
want is to deliver the mail,
you'll arrive there naturally when it's time
for you to move in, and a passing flick
of her wrist is enough to tell you
you're never going to be welcome to stay long,
you think it might be home, but home's
no longer your refuge and this awkward
game has permanently branded you a refugee,
there's no longer a place for you when
the only place you'd choose to
live is barricaded by mistakes and
magic and mysteries that you'll never resolve.
Make your home on the bus and take
another ride- there must be other stops
beyond the horizon at the end of this road.
------------------------------
This place hasn't changed, and neither have you, you
just slipped into a corporate hole for a bit too
long- you knew what lurked in those places- yet
you're out just before the claws grab you,
take care not to take a stingray barb
on the always-too-rapid rebound,
jump back here where it's safe and you're
just one more silent face in this lonely mess
Portland darkness, a city that never completely
sleeps but seems awfully still in the
middle of the night, when everyone is
either alone with the demons and divas
that sing their seductions all night long,
or joined in a testing waltz to see
if there truly is magic after midnight.
Now is the time to let go and let stasis
dance with serendipity, let go of these games
you didn't want to join, games that caught
you before you knew you were playing-
It's back to glory and sunshine now!
It's back to yellow and orange explosions
and dream stars in late night eyes
and imaginary dreams chased back into
little boy nightmare closets,
You are alive again!
Breathe it all in,
and get ready once more to be the
firebird rising full-blast from the sparks
and ashes of one more lifetime gone to hell.
------------------------------
There's toxins leaching into the Portland pond,
our defenses cracking against the onslaught
of machines and money markets, the
poison seeps in slowly,
and my job now is to clean all this water,
my job is to patch those leaks before
the entire city dies, poisoned,
but I'll be of no use if I get too
close and drink the venom myself,
and that's a slow onset killer, creeping
through your veins and thoughts until
just a sliver of sunshine remains
but that modest ray may be just enough
to purify everything around this unclean city,
and to fix those deadly leaks forever,
and to restore us to our rightful Paradise,
this city of saints and sinners Portland,
this promised Garden of Eden.
------------------------------
Now I can take my gutter seat with the
rest of the streetbound poets who passed
the same initiation, built themselves intricate
wings of wax to carry themselves closer to
some distant mystery fire, but as we approach
the sun, the melting embers of failed
ambition send us straight back into the
spinning soil we first sprouted from, I'll
come to with a bottle in my hand
and dancing the inevitable tango with
the needle that's carried only by the truest
loves, here I stagger back up, seared and
bloodied and trampled by that poppy field vision,
now a long nap calls under the
Burnside Bridge, but I'd be better off
building new improved wings, this time
I'll make sure that they're fireproof,
I'm not ready to stop flying
and sit in those poet-clogged
gutters- not quite yet.
------------------------------
No longer fling material, I've turned into a
full-fledged project now, skin wounds infected
and tonight I'm all full of holes and aches
and diseases, no longer the easy
one-nighter, come and go gentleman I once
was, now I'm going to take big work,
the foundations are only getting weaker and
it's going to be pretty expensive,
but the price keeps going up every day
you defer this maintenance of the soul,
it's tough work to do alone but
impossible with the wrong helpers,
build the team immediately and get the
blueprints sketched, simple verses won't
get this big job done, and it goes beyond
a book or a biography-
there's no more opportunities for the
uncomplicated throwaway evening, take
a look at these goods, damaged,
but promising,
and sign up for a project to reshape
the entire unconscious universe.
------------------------------
The stars called on their masters to release
the chains that bound the sunlight,
to allow this new hope to run free in
the playgrounds of the masses, to become
part of the shared unconscious once again,
poetry the music of the soul and
your ear's grown out of tune from
the tonedeaf cackling of the soul killer
corporations,
slow down and breathe deep, the chains
released, take a long look around
everything's different now in the new white light
and don't mistake the way that your eyes
ache from temporary blindness for another
bout with doubtful uncertain fear,
everyone gets scared, standing at St. Peter's
gate, thinking we know our own judgement,
but you'll never know for certain until
you take that ultimate step through,
you'll either walk amongst the clouds
and sing with the angels
or scream eternal agony as your feet
blister and peel from the flames of
too many nights pursuing your own pleasures,
you'll never know the verdict
until you finally walk through the gates
and that door has just opened itself wide.
------------------------------
Winter's last goodbye pelts Southeast Portland with
hail and sleet and the last throes of
a dark season's dying desires,
no longer can I choose to travel to the desert,
this time it's going to come for me,
the sun bringing a summons along
with the first clear skies of spring.
"You will throw yourself to the ground beside
sagebrush highways that point to infinite horizons,
you will quench your unbeatable thirst with
mirages of teachers and mentors and lovers and friends
washed down with cheap beer at clapboard bars,
before you lay down for fitful sleeps
in lumpy bed motel rooms begging for
remodeling since the road-opening 1950's",
and I don't handle authority well but
I know when an invitation is a thinly-veiled
threat, the sun offers to bring me back
to the gonzo life or to burn down
the last scraps of the conventional
existence I was never meant for, the
life I found because it was easy,
not because it was right,
that life blows apart now like the
fine talc sand of an empty playa
scoured by freight train winds and
savaged by the sun's relentless enthusiasm.
"Take my offer for I only love to
give", he says, offering a beam of
light that burns at the softest touch,
blinds at the quickest glance,
but sparks a worn-out heart to
wild desires and carefree desert journeys
with just the faintest glance to the skin,
to deny his offer is to be a
giant fighting the gods, questioning the
nature of existence and experience,
rejecting the ebb and flow yin and yang
of the charmed seasons and their diverse rewards,
and I know better than to obstruct
the inevitable stasis of the sun's shining subjects,
I'll swallow his fiery gaze whole
and give myself to whatever joyful
road that his blazing heat burns
deep inside my mapless questing soul.
