POINTLESS

I am compelled to write. Not a poem or song. A testament to my recent past perhaps. I simply, as always start with a word and let my mind, through my fingers empty itself, unburden the fading night in words.

It has been a year now since I willingly disengaged. Stopped, dropped and rolled away from people in general. I no longer feel compelled to read behind a microphone, emcee an open mic, or care whether I have left a good taste or bad taste in people I once saw near daily. I’m not exactly sure why I stopped doing the one thing outside of my house that I enjoyed other than both hosting and performing at venues had no more appeal.

I have suffered for it, for when I pulled back, I pulled all the way back. I do not submit for publication, I do not seek out chances to edit, I no longer call myself ‘Poet.” Except for the odd moment, I do not miss being out in public, interacting with people I know once cared for me. I do not miss seeing my name in print on flyers or articles. “Poet” was an aspiration for me, never a goal. I knew early on I could write with clarity, poetry challenged me to work harder at that. I knew I would never have the necessary initials behind my name for people to take me seriously, not in this success driven hyper self-inflated, education demanding twenty first century. I have not enough brain cells left me to name all the MFA’s and PhD’s I know. I love most of ‘em but never had that kind of patience to be educated away from the roots of my soul.

My mind has been broken too many times to remember, and diagnosed by too many fools to even try to recall. I have born it all though, labels, boxes, pins attempting to hold me to a display board; little has not been attempted to “help” me find a normal life. I am fortunate in that. I never was able to be forced into normal, I had to build my own chamber. Feel the wash of my own blood with every cut and break, both literally and figuratively. And through it all I wrote about it, I told anyone who cared to read about my battering against the shoals of a landfall I never felt I could reach. The climb to peaks meant just for me and now I have no treasure as I age, turmoil abounds but no succor of wisdom to fall back on. I suppose that comes from wandering aimlessly for all these decades accepting here as my destination. I have rarely been curious about, there.

Do not, I beg you, regard this as a complaint about the way my life is winding down; it is not. I have taken Frosts road less traveled and enjoyed the effort of moving down it, and I will not rage against Dylan Thomas’ darkness of the night. From my birth both were my inevitable course and my final end, I never fought the solitary path and anticipate that finale as simply another step to take when the time comes. Lord knows I have seen enough go ahead of me to know there is no use fighting with death, only acceptance that it is time to finally see. And I am tired, very tired of so many things. Physical pain being the one constant.

No one can endure as many broken bones and scalpel cuts as I have and not be in pain. 35 years though seems like it should be enough, but not yet. Not yet. My body carries enough shrapnel left inside me from surgeries one could melt me down and build a rocket to shoot the excess towards the sun. Many people are insomniac, I am not, I can sleep until pain wakes me. I once embraced it, gave it no place; but those were the days when I had a couple of jobs and a family that needed my support. No more job though and all of my kids are doing better at their age than I ever did regardless of how much I earned. I am no fanatic anymore about the need for sleep, if I get 3 hours that then is what the night allowed and if I hurt, hell yes I am going to grab a drug. Zen is cool, but Vicodin works so much faster and lasts longer.

I have spent most of the past year wondering about the illusory state of joy. There is none left within me now, maybe it is situational, a state of being depending on circumstances. If that be the case then I understand why it is dead. This past year has had its share of death, people I truly cared for gone now, both kinds of dying. Them who lost their mortal struggle and them who broke my heart. Foolish old man. I finally have learned to be circumspect with my trust. I can forgive the living, if they live still but them who died I can’t help but care for them, regret their leaving. Oh the damned turmoil left in their wake. Again money, inheritances, greed and ignorance just claims a place at the table.

Moral bankruptcy is harder for me to adapt to than the impending implosion of my pension through Detroit’s bankruptcy. This is after all Detroit and those of us who have lived here from the peak to the now sceptic tank vault have little expectation of much. This has always been a greedy place full of every imaginable kind of ill behavior between neighbors. A system of governance that exist only for its own survival. I once uprooted looking for a better place, found many of them but here I am, older, tired and constantly wondering if I had, in fact, ever left. Strange feeling that, not knowing if the best years of my living were a hallucination or did I really do all those things I think I remember.

That spirit of creation is the only one I have with me now who knows exactly who, what, where I have encountered along the way to here. And here, what is here? I have the unwilling to share beauty in my head and the polluted vision of my one eye here. My ghetto has become a slum and in becoming so it is not a welcoming home or a place where many venture to come. But through the loss of the loveliness of this place I still will shed no tear, not for here and not for me. What good is found in mourning? I simply do not know, and that same thing pretty much sums up my past year of self-isolation.