I wasted my youth growing up.
And here’s yet another fallacy:
To make a masterpiece, you must be fucked.
Fucked in the mind, in the heart, in the body–
Something about you must be broken
if you want to be heard by anybody.
But here’s the truth, and it’s free to impart:
You only have to be human
to make good art.
I can stop doing whatever at anytime.
It’s the not starting again that sucks.
Some days it’s easy, I’ll be doing fine.
Other days, I struggle to give a fuck.
I used to only quit after a close call.
Or maybe I’d ‘take a break’ for health.
But now I’m doing this for all y’all–
My friends, my family–hell–even myself.
The world’s sharper now; biting, true.
The sublime invites me to write its name.
Each day can be a challenge to even get through
But thank whatever above
I am not the same.
I apologize for being too loud.
I apologize for saying crass things.
I apologize for not being professional.
I apologize for being mean.
I apologize for ending my emails without proper respect.
I apologize for not doing what all of you expect.
I apologize for thinking out loud.
I apologize for leaving the lights on.
I apologize for swearing while you were on the phone.
I apologize for that unfortunate song.
I apologize for not being accessible or available
So you could tell me just how uncomfortable
I made everyone feel.
How much did you all internalize?
I thought everything was fine
when it absolutely wasn’t, so
I apologize.
“You’re no whisper, trickster,” I spat before I did entreat: “These are tests… Or is this all a sun-blind dream?”
But the shade could not create, could only dare repeat: “Too much so. I will not stay.” She wavered in the heat.
My mind still stuck fast between bare confusion and fear, my body split free and flew toward the call: KpliKpliKpli!
Testsfaithmemories all collided as I drew ever near. Not-Ajand made no sound, but I knew her by her leave.
The red sand met my hand and spilled into my soul. Relief and panic hit me, my heart breaking as if brandished.
She was waiting for me at the top, hand outstretched, cold. She smiled when I tepidly took it, then she simply
vanished.
I took my place among my brothers that day.
I remember that sunrise, it’s truest song.
Just as after I had asked Ajand, “Why won’t you stay?”
I awoke to the dunes of Kpli
and she was gone.
The third test loomed like the crimson horizon swelled. My trepidation solidified like a stone in my person.
Not-Ajand limped as if weak, but founded me a well. Her echo bounced back: “Intense… I think I will worsen.”
I could not tell if the shade really was only a mirror, or if it was whole and used Ajand’s voice like as a record
As we neared Kpli, I vied to know the truth clearer: Could my shame, this shade, and Faith be but a ripcord?
“What would you have of me, Spector?” demanded I. Long suffered, my patience and politeness frayed.
Not-Ajand tilted her head. “Intense… Look me in the eye.” They were old words old Ajand had already made.
I looked in her scarlet eyes anyway
and I saw the truth in those rolling dunes.
A reflection? Yes, but also, in some way…
The red devil animating her could not be rebuked.
In the valley of lovers, I ventured only under starry night. The cacti were my cups, their spines stabbing my palms.
Of my truths, I had not thought, but brooded in dull fright. Kpli deserved my respect; it’s ghosts, my psalms.
The sand clung to my face, scouring me red under-hood. If other travelers were to pass me, would they see me?
Or would they know me as one of their own understood–another shade in the land of shades, drowned in dry sea?
This, my second test, as the land of Kpli still called: My feet and my eyes betrayed me as they settled on a road.
Not-Ajand asked from whence, an echo of recalled: “Why would you ask me that? What are you owed?”
I did not know how to answer her before.
I did not know how to answer her in the wind.
I could only keep trudging ever more…
my heart still as sore as it had been back then.
“Intense,” she said, insisting I was neither good, nor bad. She left soon after, but I never forgot Ajand.
Kpli called me, as it calls us all, and I went glad. Grown apart from child-things, I sought truth in sand.
Coiling together as continent-sized lovers, the red grains waxed and waned as a great wave.
Ajand in the daydream, beckoned as another. Said she, “Intense… Too much so. I will not stay.”
An illusion, it was. Her lines called up as flesh. When the whisper faded, so too did the shade’s shape.
Kpli’s secrets required more than professed. Banishing a shadow of my past would be the first test of faith.
Do you believe those things you read?
I concede your hesitation, your need.
Even I question the strange things I have seen
and, moreover
I question my own sanity…
To what do I owe the kind of shame
I feel when the shutter closes on my mind
fully clothed?
My dignity remains intact, even my modesty
but still the buzz of reflection makes a hive of my own
thoughts.
Do I? Don’t I?
These are executive things for me.
The photographs are already shot
but pictures have yet to materialize.
In the dark, in the mystery, I theorize.
I am spreading my chest open in these frames:
Here I live and yet I die.
Should I purposefully expose this too soon
and leave myself and my critics blind?
Or should I leave the film in the bath
and simply forget
about the light
that exposes all
my lies.
Onward to Saltmarsh
(allrightsreserved)!
Onward to adventure
mystery and mirth!
Onward to luxury and loot
of TALL worth!
Onward to–
What? I–
I think
I must have misheard.
Rocks
have
fallen?
Our party is
thus
interred?
I’m learning to forgive myself.
The frustration–I think–
comes from yearning to learn something new
and concluding the curriculum I’m reading now isn’t.
I know this already, I whine silently.
I guess it’s taken years for those lessons to sink in–
to mean something.
And I’ve gotta be gentle with myself
because I promised some strangers I would be.
I’ve gotta pull a Tuesdays with Morrie
and feel the absolute frustration of everything
but let it go.
Like nothing?
So I do–because there is no ‘try’–and I squeeze the ever-loving-fuck outta my own self-loathing, hug it to my chest like smothering something permanent, yet infirm
then I relax and
set
it
free.
I hope–
I hope I never stop learning.
The Bluejay Nest 