So we saunter up to each new prospect,
slow and sly and seductive in our invitations.
"Look at what made me this way.
Wouldn't you like to see?" More
and more until we've disrobed and dismantled ourselves
to the absolute limits of our abilities (our willingness?).
We repeat this display of sacred
shedding until we finally elicit that awe-inducing look
of "concerned understanding" -  we complain
that we are misinterpreted in Cassady fashion
when we make no real efforts to be understood.
"Care most about me." Let me mystify you with myths of me,
perverse nursery rhymes lulling you into a slumber inside my skull
from which you will wake with a start,
demanding release from that citadel you so wished to infiltrate
when it was your hands that needed warming.

It was the anthem of an era – a short-lived era,

and I think only those of us who lived there

could have detected it at the time.

"*******, I'm punk."

There is constant reinvention, recreation, but

I am sure it will never be the effortless –ism it once was.

We are accessible now, but we were visible then.

We were the spectrum, we were the speed,  

an onslaught of red Sunfires and green T-Birds.

There were nights I could swear (to whatever God was to me then)  

that I had seen every last one of them trickle in or out,

sometimes all at once.

There were days I was a constant, an observer,  

terrified of missing whatever "it" wound up being.

Most of the time, I was seemingly absent – maybe soulless, even.

With coaxing, I would be brought back from stratospheric distances

to a camaraderie that seems sacred now.

None of us thought it so back then.

The grip we thought we needed always seemed to elude us.

What we did have was vital to us all,

though we couldn't admit such vulnerability –  

our eyes bugging out and our hearts caving in.

And now, knowing the future is destined to be wavy and unknown

like the tracers leaving callous brushstrokes behind everything they see,

I realize how the brick sidewalk was a sight for sore eyes if I ever stood staring at one,

motionless.

Sometimes, I still wander up to the attic.

Once devoid of purpose, I find that it now acts as a trove,

providing some temporary sanctuary from my gale.

I convince myself that the walls can sense my own fleeting presence.

They know I won't be back for a while.

They tolerate my evanescence as I begrudge them their captives.

Revisiting - never to retrieve, but to deposit just one more thing.

I am sure I elicit some suffocating fear  

of being unearthed again (and again).

I am more than half-tempted to make a break for the door  

as if I were the coward responsible for the deposition of every hunk  

of life or death that now form the walkways in this room.

But then, this is not the maze - I know and I have known.

I am the only labyrinth here, yielding no trace of a thoroughfare.  

I am left smacking into walls more menacing

than the one I will continue to stare through.

Corner after corner after corner,

each its very own long-dead end.