Red Shoes, Click Twice

 

       The other side of the mountain.
It seemed so far I didn’t notice
the uphill at all I floated and
dreamed of flying. I read Neruda
but was it true? I went to see
the national poet, Ginsberg, and
he sang a ditty so pretty. I
joined up with the poets at
Bacchanal and sang in tune
with similar glee. Drank and
wrote, late at night, seriously.
Chased after love but I’d say,
ignorantly, I didn’t know
I didn’t know so innocently.
    No one had died for me I
suppose is the only answer I can
see, left this world before they spoke,
left it upside down and inside out,
left if green and red, black and white,
the colors barely exist, the morning
birds don’t sing or warble, or roll,
scat singing, trances of life in life,
traces of love in life, a single ant
crossed the countertop and there’s
nothing that can be done about it.
    Banal, I don’t relate to other
others well, I emanate mysteriously
to myself as if floating down
the other side, it’s all been my
fault or no one’s fault, looking
back, impossible to say for sure,
and now dawn comes early and
always fake even, unnameable,
could it all be one infinitely large
face reproduced from 100,000 BC or
180,000 BC, the intent of the first
tribe of people, their heart burning
sadly & joyfully, has taken over this
world, buildings everywhere except
the last tendrils of the Amazonian or
deserted solo mountains somewhere?
How would I know anything at all in
comparison, ruined by poetry at
twenty one tender years of age?
Devastated now by wanting to be
in the dream world, one toe at least,
forever. I’ve almost made it, I think.
I may have found my red shoes,
click twice, click twice, didn’t
the lovely wise Goddess say something
along those lines? And Humpty Dumpty
Hugh doesn’t need no damned
King’s horses or King’s men I shout
uselessly against the winds of time!
Please, I beg, I’m rolling terribly
down the other side of the mountain,
I never said goodbye, how could I
be leaving, so suddenly, now is now,
the Maker is there in that pit of me!
    Hello my Maker, I’m trying
to be taken, I want to awaken,
this is so fake there’s no way
around it, the sound of it, the round
to it, I intuit the ancient Druids
touched it too, any folks with fingers
lingered there, singing there, squared
in blaring staring faring onwards,
rock n roll will save your soul and
make you whole! ____________!
    And so I appear like a ghost
to others… from the past not current,
no word will ever make sense, echoing
from a lost day when I was erased
in horror, erased in torture. Did
I give myself up or was the soul
accidentally taken into the wordless
void, pushed and shoved, kicked
screaming and weeping? Stared
into a corner where upon the onlookers
gaped, I know, passers by…
strangers… drifters… only
the unhoused really saw me go
and perhaps the Black Orpheus
but he never apologized, why should
he? standing next to the Maker
as he does, so proud he’ll never
know, or he would’ve shown up
in someone else’s eyes if I
only could have seen it before
I shut my eyes. Radu Jude
may have seen it tho, I admit.
I’m full of faults and Quicken-less,
I lose track of the weight of money
so easily.

        Radu Jude
        GOOD.

        Me bad…