Broken Afternoon

sometimes you feel like a shame or like a ruse
a half cooked idea or a trick to be used
then sometimes you feel so lowly haunted and stark
waving in the wind like a flag that's torn apart
but we all walk blindly when we stagger and we strut
and we're all dealt the hands with the cards of our luck
and we all bow down silent and the words are awe struck
by the shameless light of the broken afternoon

Yes, we all doubt ourselves, don't we? If you don't, your life isn't worth it. I mean it. You feel ashamed or a fool or like a bottled up joke that deserves laughter . . . like you have shown something of yourself--something you may not have even known you had--much less knew how to show--reveal-give--and now, well, now the whole class has seen you come to school in your underpants--yes, everyone can see the secret you should have kept hidden (the one you didn't even know you had) and they are laughing. Their laughter isn't a grumble or a chuckle--not it is a bellowing roar that comes deep from their desire to see one--another--fall into indignity--into nothing. . . . well you get the idea.

And yes, even when we have regrouped, regained our shaky confidence, and venture out--strut--we walk blindly over an abyss. Even when we strut, we do so without any justification as to why.

Then it happens: the ubiquitous afternoon sun beats down, rendering the hollow meanings we had superimposed on the morning into collapse-able tents of nausea. I don't think the words are awestruck at that point--no, they are just empty.

i went walking in the night all alone
darkness seeping slowly in my flesh and in my bone
and the solitary biting at the thoughts inside my head
and the words came slowly and the unborn dream said
that we all lose the path to the black and the blue
but we are come back slackly to the tried and the true
we'll all come together, though it's never too soon
we'll all see the light, of the broken afternoon

I have walked alot lately. The darkness is mine, I realize. And so are the flesh and bone. The thoughts--the words--the dreams--well, they are mine and not.

i used to be young but i'm not old now
the shimmering passing of you scotty pal?
the path to now or never is paved with ambition plain
as a sail in the wind or an empty garden space
and we all till and toil in the slowly rising dawn
and we're all fit to fail til the future's finally won
yeah we're all faintly waiting for the young bride to bloom
in the shuttering light of the broken afternoon

I am not young. But, I am old.
The path to now or never--it seems there have been plenty of these over time and the never never seems to come. That said, I have dreams of toiling--of trying--of a dawn that is a long time in coming. I have dreams of the broken afternoon giving way to a fresh, crisp morning--not one that will stay morning forever, but at least one that will come long before the next broken afternoon. I have dreams of blooming and a new kind of light--one that doesn't lead to the solitary darkness, but one that does involve quite a bit of flesh and bone.

At the moment, the ubiquitous sunlight of the afternoon has rendered everything to pieces--fragments of sense that hurt when touched. I don't want to unify the pieces--I want to transport them into something the darkness has birthed, but not touched.