Canto I: Bloodstained Canvas and the Empty Tea Cup
Across the river across the river across the river The streets are filled with signs that lead lost souls. Yet everybody still collides and never is there any order. The black and blue sky tells of stories we ignore. And the one who is documenting everything is pushed aside in favor of fake glorification and means to escape into something for a day
A way . . . A victory they say, but it's nothing more than the foray of the last shards of glass split from the broken dreams that were made with such frailties as to be fragile to such an extreme to make one not believe in their dream . . . the scorpion sting makes one feel less large and the small cards that are on the table tell the story, lay out the fable. Truth comes hard to the one who faces each card, and the words are like bites or pinpricks from sharp knives. A small note is made at the end of another day because there was just nothing important to say, so all mind functions started to decay as they made way for the mindless groove when five or six nudes prelude to entrancing music on Quaaludes. There is a woman downstairs who has no one who cares so she likes to share her needles and depression with anyone who has a cow's digestion. Cigarette smoke ingestion clouds up true thoughts from progression, according to the politician, who is fighting for total attrition.
Why rhyme? Its not a rule, for prose just needs to connect with the inner sanctum of the soul who is reading, but as they read, they fall into a trance, and reading becomes automatic as they absorb the meaning without knowing what they are reading.
The seedling never got stepped on or burnt to the ground, so it grew up to be a tree from one single thought or emotion, it was nurtured by nature and it grew from a tiny drop of nothing to an ocean with tributaries branching out until they run aground with drought and the Sagittarian is forced fed doubt by the Scorpion who won't sting that hand that brings creepy crawly things into its small world where there are remnants of dumb little girls swallowed up by ignorant older women and everything is set up to condemn them and further work the evils on men. The black monstrosity employs my curiosity until I am staring into seven eyes seeing one thousand lifetimes float by. I am high, yet I know there is a level in which I can surpass if I were to try . . .
Beautiful people: the sinners, normal people: the winners, unattractive people: the rest and to this many can attest, it's true, no one loves you, you're efforts to join society are thwarted by one single sense: their sense of vision which is a wall for you between your unending amount of inner beauty and the world you wish to be a part of ~ so you regress into yourself like a worm into a hole and you let the hate grow. You see lots of things to take the heat off of your feelings, lots of things, ways to lay blame, but by doing this to stay sane, you are building a foundation of shame. It's not a fucking game so realize that it is just the same as if you were limp wristed or lame. Cast out by people you probably wouldn't connect with anyway, so you form an island within not without and try to get over the bout because the only one you are battling is your own self esteem, the glass bubble, the dream, and you are back in the corner staring at four walls scratching at your balls, wishing your tits weren't so small, watching the dust as it falls.
Sad, yet understandably so, in fact, it's time for anyone who you just bumped into to go and whoever you called on the phone is either too busy or not home and when you walk to the bar you only relate to the karoke star, who is more desperate than you, but a connection is never made, you feel your dues have been paid, you wonder about the source of the jade, yet you feel as if you'll NEVER get laid.
There is this sad old song about every single thing that could go wrong and how - if it could it certainly would, leaving the listener more in a shroud, a time bomb 'bout to go off in a crowd, a woman's voice singing about things men are depressed about, and a man's voice shouting with aggression this society's dirty confession.
And the canvas turns to blood as all the paint is washed away, the creations sink into the mud at the end of another rainy day. So many things forgotten but never too far from thought - souls that are so worthless they are bartered for, not bought. So many musicians that can't hear the eternal song, yet they keep pressing on and are melting in the desert's sun. So brutal is the way the beauty seems to play mind games every other day, like a bipolar sickness that changes with shocking quickness. No man can compete against the Devil's payroll for that innocent young creature on the street.
Another guy who I met had those Sagittarian eyes that told no lies. He took everything everyone ever believed in and twisted it all into oblivion, making good deeds seem like sin and giving losers the upper hand to win. When he breathed a deep breath, soft words were heard about death - his obsession. The fear he whittled from limbs of the tree of life were finely crafted by his pen, his knife. So skilled he seemed to me, yet to himself he was not free from the debris that cluttered his creative passion and left his works collecting dust half fashioned. And though I've never had an eye for men, his beauty appealed to me, and I felt something strange that led me to thoughts deranged. His blood spilled on the canvas, his arm flopped onto the floor, clutching the brush as three concubines began to exploit the lust and all inhibitions faded into the incense smoke but not before I felt a desire that flickered and waned in the candle flame. The story was written by the troubadours and the and the sad souls left in the gallows to observe the vulture's feast and to craft the final design for the Beast. All of society's unraveling began when the story started traveling from table to table, laid out in cards and told like a fable with tea leaves backing up the lessons to be learned and empty tea cups collecting wax from the black candles as they burned. Gone gone gone gone. The last surge of smoke shoots up as the last candle burns down to nothing. Something. I - one man, one grain of sand, how can I stand against the layout of the land and reveal my plan to them . . .
All of your endeavors that you feel pulling you towards treasures with dreams of forevers are just the mind's lies unfolding before you and pushing tears from the corners of your eyes, your bloodshot eyes, with dilated pupils and red lids, your dirty greasy hair and your scruffy chin. The wrinkles forming in their corners, the softness of your skin has faded and your hands have become callused and rough like leather because reality beat your dreams into submission and you forgot about your youthful desires in favor of escaping loneliness' funeral pyres. Sad to see, but to me it happens every day and to just sit back and say that you could have found a way would be quite meek because the underlying fact is you were weak. You never let the dream peek, but you threw in the towel to be bleak and bland so you could be a man according to the definition made by other men - when will you learn? When will you take your turn? Answer from a soul who has known the answer for centuries: Never, so just forget the dream because you are much too confined to break reality's grip and go on the trip that leads to the ship which takes you across the sea of disbelief into a place where dreams morph into reality over time. It's a long and treacherous journey, and there are storms over the stern, but that's to make you learn that you have to wait your turn . . . and keep the dream alive Sagittarian Dirge ~ don't let it die, don't let the blood on the canvas dry, or the paint wash into the sea, fill up the cup with more tea. Don't fade into the wall and become a meaningless dot in the overall compilation of blandness. Like so many, who are now not really any because they made their marks on the back side of the bottom of a featureless stone that nobody will ever see anyway. Their contributions did nothing for themselves and triggered the emotions of no one else. It is good for them to become subdued because they were never really true - but you're not supposed to take their cue. Forget about gurus and ya hoos who never had clues and didn't know which drugs to use and which drugs to abuse. Misshapen clay that lumps up into an ugly pile of nothing special and is loved for reasons negligent of reason like a flower that blooms out of season mixed with a pirate's shipmate who commits treason. Meaningless is so easy to document that it's hard for any outside influence to prevent the discord that is bred by the things peers have said - why take it all with a grain of salt when the taste it leaves behind is bitter?
Prose spilling out like milk onto the floor, cried about, laughed about, and soaked up for what it is for. Yet there is no satisfaction gained and the pupil is never fully trained. Important points are left out so that there can be more things to think about. Emotions are tossed around like downtown kicks out every sound. A true lover of this plight is left defenseless in the war's most brutal fight . . . left behind by a system designed by those who recruited them. Irony that is too obvious to see, destiny that is broken away and sets them free. Free to become yet more desperate to cling onto something that is a giant collection of unfinished thoughts and unsung songs. Music that sounds like children playing in the park, light that makes bright things dark and a spark ~ of wisdom that is overpowered in the maelstrom. There was some final thoughts that were sold to those with writer's block at a cost they could not afford so as to be in debt forever more . . . so as to not be able to commission even the most desperate whore and be left in a crowded street with nothing but the torn up army coat on their backs and taped together shoes on their rotting feet (clutching their collection of poetry and twisted thoughts which is desired by no one and never to be sought). I hear the bongos down the way and a sitar that the ghost of Buddha still plays - the young dreamers who gather to share passing by are the empty eyes that stare - wishing for an ounce of youth or a hint of truth, melting in the sun, thinking they are the only one. All these things the Sagittarian eye takes into consideration are just glimpses most people ignore due to frustration. Ignore to spite, ignore to fight, to fight back their own disappointing scars on their American pride, brought on by their many dreams that have all but died. At best, they had a simple vision that would rest when they thought they had missed them, and it would hurt when nobody would kiss them, but that's life for the Sagittarian. Let the problems of the rest of the world rest on other's shoulders because all of your thoughts are in binary coded folders that may never really be opened while you are alive - that's how it has been since the beginning of time. Let it all happen, let it take its proper course, let the lovers die let the haters breed war, don't try to break it down, just let your mind go free. Let the Saints be Saints, let you be you, and let me be me. Turn the page and fill in the empty space but don't draw any emotions on the widow's face. Let the world turn let the fire burn. Then call it what you wish and submit to the bait like a fish.
-braden
canto I
4.29.99
