And the bravery of the everyday moment!
Caught then somewhere between becoming a person and actually being a leader. Being myself, I suppose, but killed, assassinated before a word can leave my mouth in defense. No use trying then, just run away.
Does the mother miss the child when she needed to erase them to live? Where was the father? Is a scream living, or healing? There is no penance enough when the future is burning. (The future is the penance, I suppose.)
When a leader is made by assassination, many more spring up. In the shadow of the 60’s and then Chapman shoots Lennon in ’80. Me and my friends went down to the steps of the art museum. All these other people were there. This is before cell phones and internet—we just knew to go there. My friend took a photo that I still remember of a young woman just looking at her hands. I’d like to see that again.
And how to make a life just watching the shit show? Small talk gets difficult. Cynicism as signs of life. Was the Pied Piper weeping as he walked and played that magic tune? I think it was either a she or else anonymous. Later, the myth makers couldn’t say, just a Pied Piper. Twinkling eyes, no doubt.
I’m trying to recruit the peeps for my mountain and they’re threatening to lock ‘em up forever and throw away the key. Or threatening them with the work gang life. Work for them is digging endless ditches in the hot sun or else we’ll be foraging for berries in the hills somewhere and sleeping on the cold ground, on the run. Catch a chill you can’t shake off. I think my brother went that way. I just never saw him again.
So I’d just ask Homer Simpson how to come back from war. And hope Athena is on my side. I do know that as I work, either pulling the oar or renovating that bathroom, or whatever--I work with every other worker in this world. I’m in the kitchen or down in the ditch too. One long trench, a man with a gun over there, watching. We owe, just owe and owe. We don’t own.
So how far will the children wander from our home in the hills as we work to resolve these tragic differences between mom and dad? Every new person we meet is either a mom/dad combo or a dad/mom combo. The transformation will be complete soon enough. No time for small talk, just the Pied Piper’s endless tune. I never could learn that song. If it is a song.
My mother, for instance, just likes a little kiss on the lips, never a hug. I get the feeling she might start crying and then never stop. We’d be there, shuffling our feet, reassuring her for hours, postponing lunch. Saying sorry. Somebody go make some sandwiches.
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