Don't be discouraged,
Thinking has changed
FAIL now is
First attempt in Learning
11/9/2021

Sepia is that burnt orange color of old
Postcards;  Of things remembered and
Still treasures of memories fading and
Almost forgotten that once were in a
Now exhuberant, that could not imagine
That it was was passing.passing before
Our eyes.  Even nowing into darkness
Where all of our treasures are buried

I passed out on
some apartment
steps downtown.
Too much beer and
****** the night before.
two cops wake me,
and take me to jail.
when I got out the
next day,
they gave me my
clothes and property.
I had two ****** left,
and ate them while
changing out of the
tangerine colored jumpsuit.
I stepped into the
bright sunlight,
slipped on my ray-Bans,
nowhere to go.

I danced and drank,
****** and sang,
like some kind of
warped god,
like I owned the night,
pretending tomorrow
was a decade away.

Dawn proved me wrong,
and once again,
reality received my
waking eyes.

And when the morning
proved too much to
bear...
I danced and drank,
****** and sang
like some kind of
warped god
all over again.

Life wears me out with
its twists and turns
and hairpin curves.
I keep waiting for a long
peaceful stretch of
highway, bathed in
the rising sun;
a golden wheat field
to the left, a moss covered
pond with dragonflies to
the right.

The road turns to
gravel and rapidly
climbs uphill.
There are signs along
the way that promise
the world.
The road becomes narrow,
turns to dirt,
and ultimately disappears.

A Thought:
                 Maybe there is no grand crescendo to the human symphony
Maybe life ends, and begins, on a prolonged refrain
A steady, repeating, fading rhythm
The only flourish of a lonely universe
Trying desperately, in its way, to find a dance partner for the darkness
Eternity; our veiled mistress waiting past the mist
For the light to outrun an endlessly unfurling landscape of black
The space between
The mimicry of a photograph, and the true shape of the memory
That a frame can never quite squeeze
Those lost edges lie in wait
Just beyond a waking moment, and the closing scene of our final dream
A place not lost, but yet to be found
That is all,
For now.