(a rough draft of an experiment for a long form narrative)


The Life & Times
(All Nine {plus an extra one or two [maybe even a few]})
of Ol’ Tom-Cat Caine Hackett,
Mayor of Flood St. 
Friend of the People!  
Defender of Youth.  
A man,
Nay - an Icon - 
Who gave his all for you
In pursuit of a good time
and to find his own mind -
so that those who knew him,
In his heyday downtown
bopping around
the streets & alleys, in his gutter suit,
and his busted boots
like a vaudevillian *****, waxing with the moon,
Or waining, in his later days,
with its somber milieu,
could understand
What happened to him,
and why he did it,
and that he knew…
It was his; his own doing.
And undoing.
But All of it,
was a big, brilliant bit
he was Performing
just for you -
For “***** and giggles” and smiles and kicks and hits and slaps and laughs, even the misses too -
And it was just … something to do …


.^(@)^.
(an.. here’s the thing.. there was nothing you could do,
to stop it or alter his course,
that was up to him,
and he knew that too.)

                     Besides
                         We        
<€=+~-.•^[{( @ )}]^•.-~+=€>
         saw the whole thing
      an “I” that never blinks

Introduction:

“Please Allow me, To introduce myself,
My name… is Mon Capitán Alon Godai. Professional. Professor of Prophecy at the Metatron Institute for Prophetic Dissemination. Not to be confused with Monsieur Godot (the similarities are indeed uncanny, profound even, however I assure you, we are easy to tell apart, for he is always late, and I… am perpetually rrRight! On time.)

Mon plaisir, monsieur. How Dooo you do?

I’d like to offer you a story, if you have some time to sit. It’s a bit of a meandering thing, but it comes together to get her in the end - and its a pretty path along the route.

Would you like to hear a tale of lies and troubled times that’s actually about victory and truth?
Well if you do, just stay right there, and I’ll be right back with you, but first - Some entertainment: perhaps a sad song would set the mood?

LLLET the SHOW BEGIN!
Please allow me to introduce to You:
- Ms. Monet Moneypenny -
  and the Rag Time Review!

Bon Soirre, Mon amie! I hope you enjoy the tune!”



You think about what you’re doing, why you’re there and what you did and then you look back at it and you just …
euff.. *******.
That was close man.
You probably shouldn’t do that again.
That was one of the dumber bits you’ve seen all the way through.

That was definitely strange and stupid. The optics on it are gonna be tough to defend. I mean … what it looks like. . . Is you ******* up so hard, like you’re ******* for drug money like you probably would do. You’re too old to be a Coke ***** ******, and you’ve got better things to do. So get your **** together and get outta there. And leave it all behind. You probably should call a friend. You definitely been doing shady ****, and it’s about time you were through.

But instead you met the devil in all his faces on the streets and you let him right in and called him friend and told him to take a seat… \/~>

~>1^And he bought you something to eat, gave you somewhere to be, get yourself a bath, have a bit of a chat, a little of that, and then you got somewhere to sleep, for free. Then He talks about what he thinks you can be. Makes you think you can do it and it’ll sweet. He tells you he “can make you plenty.”
“It’s easy kiddo, you’ll see. You’ll start making boats of money. You just hang with me.”
^\/ And he flashes cash so fast in stacks and racks and he talks too fast to keep up and he slings it out with reckless abandon and he wants the best for you and he kinda seems like he means it like it’s le-***. ~>And it’s just what you’ve been looking for, hoping and praying for, for it to somehow just show up .. and it shows. so you kinda get taken hostage without even knowing what you know you know.
You know you shoulda seen it before you did, you always do. (Both in that you always “shoulda seen it coming,” but you never do, AND you do see it coming you just do what you’re gonna do.) but you didn’t… so now you deal with it. Buuuut You didn’t because you looked up and away from it and you chose to believe in A Savior so it’s on you, you know.. You know? … You know.

but you don’t know that
… so you Go!

(--)/ yay!!!

Yeah? Can you teach me? Can I call you teach? I can learn anything I want to, if I wanna do it, at least I believe I can; I haven’t done it, per se, but gimme a shot man, I won’t waste it, you’ll see just what I can do (^^) lol

•You set the chessboard up slowly unfolding everything take out the timer unroll the mat, flatten it out set the pieces and correct his setup and listen and conversaré

“Sure thing”


~>2 And that-
was a stupid mistake.
It was CLEARLY a con,
you knew that…
From the start.
But you both got something. And what’s the worst that can happen, you get caught doing druggie stuff with a straight guy in a hotel room? You don’t care what people think, and you’re straight (enough) you just like being a friend and you need friends cuz you profoundly lonely by yourself when it’s just you and yourself and I and me and my… and him and that guy, and maybe those two, ^And her, no not her. (Gestures “around with their finger, shushing, and then points) Her ugh. Move.) annnd.. uh ..you. get held up and stuck, sometimes you get ****** up, sometimes you get ******, sometimes you get to do the ******:~>
sometimes it *****.
Sometimes it’s a win…
Not usually but it could be, seemed like it might’a been :-/  
-> and you don’t have to scratch it in to something, but you kinda a want to, as a marker, like on a tomb, anonymous and sequestered, in a corner or on a door jamb, in cryptic symbols, like hobos used to do. The real Ones that rode the rails hopping cars chasing youth, choosing freedom and truth (and also fleas and poverty and drugs and *****); they used to make chalk marks on buildings along the route, and the symbols grew up and made a language - or - at least a lexicon…

…sometimes it’s a little messy, sometimes it’s illegal. Sometimes it seems like it was dangerous, but you were safe, it’s very easy to confuse. When it feels safe is when you lose. Comfy fools get caught and shot when the hunters show up looking for food, Or fodder for the war machines to keep em moving and full of boots. If it’s dangerous it keeps you jumping, on your toes. Cooling your heals is fine, but resting on your laurels isn’t working and you gotta keep moving if you wanna keep a step of head of consequences. Always on the Move! Moving targets are harder to hit and this target ******* MOoooVES!
:~>•*•.
               (‘:
****… got me.
(Hahaaah! Hahaheheh…)

What’s a little mess to clean up? It’ll wash off with money. . . and Besides-

it ain’t my room.

Aphorisms rarely confer the comfort they intend
                                    BUT
   “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”

An antique wooden trunk sits languidly beside the road (Alabama State Highway 98 Scenic Route, Main St. Daphne, for those that need to know) atop a concrete culvert cover amidst a color-guard composed of an unused ironing board, and a mildewed duffel-bag (but the nicer kind- made of synthetic blend, with the wheels that don’t really roll, and an extendable handle that’s stuck “in”; not the heavy olive-drab canvas of the pop-culture cliche, found slung across the shoulder of the love-lorn/shell-shocked/long-lost soldier returning home unannounced in a lifetime movie melodrama) discarded haphazardly, and awaiting their diesel-powered trash-truck ferry to the afterlife of moribund things; but serendipitously and surreptitiously it is to be rescued from oblivion by the unexpected happenstance of a passerby passing by distractedly (gone out of his way though he really has no where to go, just somewhere to be, eventually) meandering through town, down alternate roads making his way to a rendezvous with a friend to give them a hand, for a minute, with some chores they’d like to get through before they leave for Atlanta, because he hasn’t seen them recently, and he had nothing better to do.

How many others have passed by the unmapped X, but never saw it for they were so myopic in their missions and goals: rushed and unconscious, on autopilot, en route, to work, or to lunch, to mid-day meetings with clients for paper and gold; How many missed the possibility of adventure passing by, the childish excitement that could unfold, if they had just looked up from their phones and coffees and looked around for signs, untold? How many noticed the slight shimmer of fantasy left sitting by the road, but couldn’t stop because they were in a carpool, they weren’t driving, or just so unimaginative that to believe, for a bit, that a treasure exists outside the storied pages of fairy tales was too much to do, or too much to bear, with a rundown, old soul. Did a child see, with impressionable eyes, the chest of treasure left by a fool, unattended, out in the open (not buried, not even a bit, barely even hidden from view) and instantly wonder, too, just what might be inside? Could it be shimmering, shining jewels, loose and encrusting golden crowns, and goblets, scepters and silver candlesticks, precious oriental silks, or bullion and pirate *****; possibly a magic lamp, or maybe some enchanted tools?! A flying carpet!? Perhaps A Ghost of some grim ghoul. Did they beg a guardian to stop the carriage, but were denied and told, “we have to keep going little one, there’s much to get to that you don’t know. You have to go to school.”
Well, the glimmer caught the eye of one beholder and made them think immediately, “That looks like treasure!”

Indeed!
It did look like treasure: a literal chest, built of heartwood with a carved arch-top, weathered paint, rusted hinges, metal bindings and filigree.

(It was obviously empty of value, scuttled, broken, and relinquished to the refuse heap; However, To one with a limp, and a bad eye, and a deaf ear, brandishing a homeward bound insignia upon his chest and an island luck charm in black ink on his leg, whom you’d easily confuse for a pirate misplaced, you can see how it might seem to warrant an inspection.)

Plus: It’s uncommon to find a treasure chest
in the trash, in this century. Perhaps hope got the best of me; but also I knew its fate was not to be buried under heaps of plastic and rot.

I’ve a friend whose proclivity one could describe as a collector of things, useful and abandoned... but not a “hoarder” like on the television - Unless you count Ariel as such- with all her jetsam, Knick-knacks, thing-a-ma-bobbers, and dreams.

We are “of a kind,” prone to picking up after others, collecting aesthetic driftwood- anthropomorphized or just architecturally interesting, finding faces in fallen leaves, pointing to leaves that look like bugs, picking up bugs dried up like leaves and or sticks and stones and broken bones of small creatures long left rotting, beautifully decaying detritus of modernity - deemed useless; but still WE believe a greater purpose lies within, undefined by its usefulness, to be determined by it’s form Rather than function, appropriated and repaired  or dismantled and “re-crafted” into art, by simplification. Driven by a simple inspiration; To make beautiful decoration.

I pull aside, let traffic pass, circle back, reorient and reclaim this bounty of the proverbial “spring-clean.” Its condition is one of slight disrepair: needs hinges re-attached; but otherwise in fine shape. I collect this treasured trash and return to my path, on course to its new home with my friend to whom I was already bound; But now I come bearing gifts.

His smile was worth the drive and the dumpster-diving and the the whole day.

A gift given is a love lived-in, and a smile
shared with a friend Is love and life for me.

Mysterious Paradoxes

I just watched a man
take a token from the hand
of a life long friend,
again!
For the power of relief
from poison and pride.
A marker of 31 years
in recovery
from the hell
of addiction and drink.

Face Fear
face first
fearless and thorough from start to finish


“When I face fear, I’m given courage;
When I help my brother, I help myself.”


A third life is possible if the second try fails.
Even then it’s still the first:
3 in 1 like the ghost
and the father and the sun.
From our mother we are birthed
and led to find a guiding hand
and to help others who are lost
find the path and the light
and the love of a life
free from the powers
of persuasion by the devil
and his friends.

A simple solution -

Surrender to Win!

Amen… again
And again and again,
‘Til it ends.
It begins
In a place
Among friends;
One day at a time.
Everyday can be mine
If I find what I found
the first time I really tried.



Common solution
1005 old shell
11:19am
2-23-24

Oh Joy!
Oh sweetest thing,
Blossom and sing!

Were you a flower,
You would ever be 
never picked, or plucked;
neither clipped nor pruned;
Rather, left unfettered,
Unsung, in the meadow.

Such is the love of a poet
for the words of a soul,
And the soul
never met
but through pages and text;

Grow Perennial,
Hopeful
Ambrosial intoxicant
Evolve and sublimate,
Evaporate
And precipitate beauty and truth
Before grave turns thy youth
Beset by passing days;
When the inevitable click
of the last tick of the clock
puts a stop
.
to the flow of a beatific mind.

Let time spend its days
flitting and frittering away.
Let me remain
standing here,
Ad infinitum, held hostage
to a moment
of refrain

Oh Joy!
Oh sweetest thing,
Blossom and sing!

The hymn sung of dawn
by sparrow and skylark
to meadow and marsh…

The joy of life
never faded for me
There's so much beauty
in all I see
The love in me
is heaven sent
I give my love
to you, the recipient
My love is pure
Don't want anything in return
For you dear reader
my love does burn
There's so much love
It can fill a sea
I pass it on
through poetry
In love I hope
For love I live
Whatever you need
I will try to give
To you I give
This heartfelt smile
so we can share
our joy a while

Oh forgetfulness!
When I taste of your nectar so sweet
I feel a loving embrace that numbs my anguish
I am afflicted by bruises that never heal
Made victim of people I can't openly accuse
My sober mind has become a den of horror
My loved ones do not feel any sympathy for me
Out in the cold streets is where I belong
Living in a tent surrounded by trees and the elements
For I could not manage my own house
Reality is a blur for the addict
It's hard to tell what's real or imaginary
Small acts of disrespect I blow out of proportion
Small agitations make me inclined to violence
I fear myself more than anything
If I were to be honest with God
I would tell him I am no longer useful
My words slump to the ground
There is no vigour or persuasiveness in them
My relationships have all ended in failure
Too many burned bridges lead to dead ends
I wander aimlessly without direction
Like an abandoned and ***** dog am I
I hope to find any scrap of belonging
People pass me without any knowledge
That I was once a vibrant little boy
Worthy of a bright future but alas!
I am a deeply disturbed man
All these thoughts never leave me alone