The poet, the lover and the madman

Also written last year.


There he was,
everything they said he would be,
violent,
unearthly,
stumbling,
dizzying,
a reeling world of confusion
that I was not privy to
nor never would be
(if I did as I was told).
I envied him that
he had done everything
he ought not to do, broken every rule
he ought to have obeyed.
Then too I pitied him
that he had little left to do.
Is it strange of me to hold dear
the lengthly list of what I have yet to live?

He will not stop squeaking,
loosing a rambling narrative
that makes sense only to him
and within the bottle.

Something in me knows
that if only I were a step closer,
half an inch less sober,
or the tiniest bit smarter
I might hear
the secrets of the ancients,
the throve-guarded mysteries of the ages
come tumbling
from his froth-corrupted lips.

And then I cried
because what I labor to write
with all the force of my existence
could never meet
the raw beauty
of his drunken
broken
stuporous
syllables.
My passion,
the force that moves stones
and sometimes people,
will never match the
painfully
lovely nuances
of his words,
which drop like rubies
to the sea.

I cried because
no matter how long
I labor and pine to be heard
and remembered,
my voice too
must hang invisible,
a single drop beneath the surface of the sea
dispersing no farther than his
for all my inky pains.

I am afraid to step much closer;
and yet despite myself I drift,
wary,
towards his magnetic
wandering eyes,
hating my own caution
and my own painful desires.

Phrases drift within me;
"sweet sad world..."
"blowing in the wind..."
"to wish for impossible things..."
and, finally
"the poet, the lover and the madman..."

and then
for a moment I am smart enough,
near enough,
drunk enough
to hear
and see
and live
how much I have yet to know;

"...all are one."