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Sep 2012
Gather up, all you roaming and innocent true eyed youths,
the bells that chime the maturing of years will dictate.
And our minds, even in dreaming, are flashing,overloading,constantly ON.
Burning ourselves back towards the sediment,
back towards the eve of light and the horizon’s sweet ascent,
the hope of the bettering of Man (Woman, Child, Subject, Dependent, Enemy, Statistic)
to be played out by actors unsure all over again,
Plot, attempt, market research, unlikely success, unforetold rapid decline
Walk on down that road.

Twenty-Three years of Searching and Bafflement
I still walk on down that road.
The air smelling of leaking chemicals of exported decorative garden plants
the odd fir tree to remind me of a progressive upheaval.
I’ve read about Everything, I’ve sought out Everything; I’ve tried Everything
And yet still unsatisfied.
And yet onward I trot....
Left with the only things I still enjoy doing
Reading, writing about reading and writing about life
listening to music (Both new and the old, same old...cycle ending cycle re-entering brainwaves)
Thinking about ******’
and occasionally enjoying non-self centered ***
(Giving, once in a while, such unexpected joy, and who’d have thought?..)
And always at the back of my head
wondering how if I could get hooked on some supposed poisonous deity
Billfold notes stained ******* or some equally widely condemned non-popular pariah seal
And if I managed not to impoverish myself and become alienated from friends and family
And the moral majority
Then perhaps I could evolve to enjoy even that.
What is pleasure and its pursuit if not some guarantee of routine?
So I continue walking down that road.

Away, away, soon to return another day
Fresher (hardly) enlightened, the same...
and still I cannot recommend to myself
anything else but walking.
For to which valley the wise one goes, who knows, who knows......
Turn left, turn right, only the principles of geography can begin to decide fate.
(Though I would suggest bringing an umbrella, every now and again, just in case....)
To search for others, who would bring a chance of difference, on that self-same route
who share jokes about this one man...
Who was walking down that road.
This poem was partly inspired by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds's song "Papa Won't Leave You,Henry".
(From the album "Henry's Dream",1992.)
Written by
Westley Barnes
1.4k
 
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