Photo-Ma-Graphy

(The Bluffs Earlier This Summer, 2012)

Look at that fool, he's a goner.  He keeps on taking her photograph, saving each memory, year after year, touching her hand, saying soft things, making moments happen, even if they took many tries and a lot patience.  At it again, when will he learn.

I'm watching a moment pass me like the wind passes me with a cool breath.  And then it is leaves me and by the time it is gone I realize a wind had passed.  I watch it rustle against the trees ahead, I see it kick things up, I watch it destroy lives, make them, move someone high above and leave them stranded on the top of some great peak.  I've seen it do these things over and over and yet I drove in, sipping my feet into the rivers that no man can ever imagine taming.
I can't remember the last time I went swimming, I can't remember the feeling.  I wish it all lost meaning and I could leave it be.  I wanted it to stop but it never stopped bugging me, asking me, come out and play.  There's a knife behind your back I say, and it don't matter, I still go, I move forwards and I know it is a trap, and that's how foolish I be.  And all of a sudden-like, and out of the blue, and all of the foolish things I've done cannot be reversed, I know I am a grown man, I know I am above all of this, that time, experience, and understanding how I work moves me away from this, and yet, by golly there I am.  I don't know how it is done, I don't know why it always happens, captain, but there it be.  Once again, my friend, you got me.

And all the hot-damns and hot-dogs won't settle my soul, won't settle the feeling, that I wish I was born cold for, that I never felt, that pandora stayed shut.  Damn shut, bolted, and never even thought of.  It is beyond regret, it sure is, and sometimes, and sometimes it is better to not then to ever, and to shiver the past, and do it full and full ass, because half-ass don't cut the muster.  Now this time nor the next, and you can cut them out but you can't leave them.  They'll be your curse, and the cursed love to curse like anchors love to drag the ship to the bottom.

And now I learn how to disappear, and now I learn to walk the other way.  Sing it with me.  Aaaand Now I'hhhhhh l'ern how-woah to dissssapppppearrr, Aaaaand Now I'hhhhh l'ern ta walk thee ootthher wa-aayyyee.

I'm too old to run away so I'll leave it up to you.  You can after all and you will, and I'll still be here.  And when we say hello again, call me a stranger, call me nothing, and don't call at all.  From the sea of swollen to the pits of hells, the soft sounds of a man, and the woman's hand, memories and memoirs, a broken floor, and loose belt, the cat's dead, I mean, really the cat's dead, the other cats are chasing its ghost.
Don't leave this place with a smile nor a frown, just leave.  (Slams door, the window cracks, and the little miniature cars fall from the shelf and on to the carpet.)  I go to pick up the pieces and see I'm wearing no pants, and look up again and see that no one's home.  I close my eyes and imagine