Tell me
If I’m wrong,
But haven’t we been here before?
We reach this same fork in the road
No matter where we turn,
No matter the distance,
No matter the time.
Tell me,
How many times
Will I have to make this choice
Between those two old foes,
Light and Dark,
Good and Evil,
The Better Man and the Fool?
Tell me,
How many times
Will I have to make the decision
To take the harder road,
The steeper path,
The journey more strewn with danger,
The straight and the narrow?
And tell me,
If I dare ask,
How many times
Will I fail?

I once set out to write a tale
Of woe and wonder,
Fame and fortune,
Pride and prejudice,
If you will.

Little did I know
That on the other side of my pen,
Lie a deity, a god of sorts,
A creator of things,
A writer of words,
And scare had I perceived him
When his voice thundered from the Heavens,
That I was not a hero by any measure,
Not the protagonist, nor her ally,
Not even a passer-by was I.

No,
I was summarily told that I was the enemy,
Or rather – The Adversary,
That ancient foe Lucifer,
Cast down,
Cursed
To pen tales of Paradise Lost
And write in my Devil’s Notebook,
For if I wanted knowledge,
Said he,
I would have to earn it,
And yearn for it,
And burn
Here
In hell for it.

Flowers killed by first frost,
Lovers lost to a language barrier,
Late-night trains carrying no passengers,
The bittersweet dregs from the cup we call life;
These are things sorrowful beyond compare,
Things that sing of emptiness,
And brutality, and, as always,
The space between us –
Yawning and gaping like the interstellar void;
Yet these are the things that draw us together,
That make us one;
These are the things we share,
Despite the dismal reality
That even the atoms within us,
Cluttered so close, yet so far,
Are mostly just
Empty space
(    .    )

I ain’t nothin’ but a low life,
Nothin’ but wasted time
And broken dreams
Nailed together
To a crooked cross;
I ain’t nothin’ when it all falls away,
Nothin’ at all when the curtain parts,
When the stage clears,
When the spot light is on me,
When the audience of the ghosts of loves past
Rises in harmony,
Floating heavenward
To serenade my swan song
The only way they know how –
Leavin’ me with nothin’ but my low life.

Last Chance Lane
Is where we all end up at some point
Or another,
Where we pause at the doorway,
Thinking –
“This is it,”
Mourning the end of an era,
Grieving the death of a way of living,
Sorrowfully wishing, wondering,
Whispering into the autumn breezes –
“Why?”
For the past is irrevocably over,
And the present brutally flashing before our eyes,
But here, now, cruising down Last Chance Lane,
Doing ninety on ’80,
You can see the most fleeting of glimpses into the future,
You may peek into a world
Where you know the mistake you’re about to make,
But you go right ahead
And make it anyway.

First light,
And another long day,
Young gods slowly growing older;

Moonrise,
And the death of another day,
Old gods slowly fading back to black.