lost poet wandering

I do, very often, lose myself in my dreams... in the middle of a conversation or a prayer or in the madness of my love making... I will drift off into another world – which I sometimes confuse for reality – as that other world is so much better than this chaos I have been thrown into... but... said the master... in a dream or a letter or channeled through the ether... “the dream is the reality...”

I have spent the majority of my life chasing after magic – in poetry and art, in books and structures and kisses... in hidden places and the passing glances of beautiful strangers... magic is what my soul yearns for – the mystical, the mysterious... the mythical... the illusive and the spiritual.

There is an empty space inside of me – that part of you that is the bridge between your heart and your soul... the passageway between the ego and the mind... for me there is emptiness and I have wandered around the world and floated through the astral realms and even cloaked myself in the shadows of the occult and let myself linger, perhaps longer than I should have, in the libraries of madmen in search of meaning and reason and some simple philosophy that could ease the anger and hatred I have carried with me and carry still... a spell or a curse to pull the whispers of my creator out of the smoke and the fire... something to reassure me that I will not go out of the world the way I came into it... but... perhaps that is the best of all possible ways to go out... covered in blood... screaming and cursing the God that gives... and takes it all away...

I have gone down paths, in search of the eternal fires and forbidden waters, that angels did tell me “we will not go after you if you cannot find your way back from that temple in the dark”.

I never abandoned my God... though I feel many times... my God may have abandoned me... and I wonder now, as an older man (but not much wiser), was he watching me through his spyglass all along as I stumbled and crawled and bartered my way back home from those places I knew I never should have gone looking for to begin with... the strange thing of it all, is that the magic was there waiting for me to stumble upon when I returned from the abyss of my heart and the maddening stillness of my mind.

I wake from the dream – or fall into it – at destinies will. I come out of the cloud and find myself in a book dealers holding some delicate grimoire in my hands or I'll materialize in a crowded corner of an antique shop caressing a pocket watch or some old mans spectacles searching the details for a trace of it in my memories... I whisper words to trinkets in hopes they may remember me and call out to me by name and reveal to me those secrets I left behind in a far away place when we wandered the world together in search of the same magic... I still have boxes filled with all those trinkets – pins and watches and tools... old picture frames and cigarette cases... stamps and postcards and strangers journals... on shelves in a closet in a place the world will ignore as it rushes toward the apocalypse...

I had to stop and think of the restless dreams and hopes of old cowboys... do they get carried off in the dust and come to rest on the wings of butterflies... only to be shaken loose as they fly into a storm. What of the sad stories and lies of solitary sailors that no-one will ever hear... is there an angel in the waters swimming after those echos - stuffing them into a bottle and flying them away to a mountain where they come out of the glass as sighs disguised as clouds erupting into rain... will I too just be forgotten... will anyone collect the dreams I leave behind... will there be any proof for the world of the love I made and the tears I cried... and the desires of my soul... when the fires have stopped burning on the sun...

Will she ever know... for me... it was real.