Blackbird

The prophecies must come true now, the dark demented ones, that promised our race nothing but pain and heartbreak. The world watches in horror as pig’s fly across borders. India as usual wakes up too late, makes a lot of noise and beats it’s chest, but it’s a hollow posturing, the contagion is already here. Panic’s first strains shiver through the air, as civilization peels back it’s civilized face to show the animal beneath. Dear Goddess, have mercy on my country. Show us how to be proud, prepared, and pro-active.

I run to escape the cigarette smoke that follows me like a stray cat I made the mistake of feeding once. Wherever I go now, there’s she is, rubbing against my legs, mewling to be scratched. The morning papers make my lips snarl, and my brows furrow. No wonder so many of us have mature lines and hollows in our youthful faces. How much weight can we continue to bear? We are not Titans, we were never meant to be. Where are the gods? Perhaps where they’ve always been, behind us, only now we’re too proud to turn around.

The snake has returned to me. It stretches and slithers around in the hollow of my hip, making it painful to even sit and write these days. Every so often it twists up my spine and licks the underside of my thoughts, hissing it’s sibilant seductions, commanding me to indulge it’s thirst for my self-loathing. But I refuse tonight.

Saw Johnny Depp become John Dillinger yesterday night and for two something hours I was reminded of just how great my profession can be when done by a master. Spirits were lifted, smiles were cured of their amnesia and reminded that they must come out and play more often, and coffee was had, sweet and black, so hot it burned the tongue and ached the teeth. But it went with the night, and the breeze that came in clean and soft, all it’s burdens cast aside, running free until the morning tide.

I was alone again, but once more reminded that often I prefer it that way. It does me good to hear no other voices but those in my head. I keeps me from getting confused, or at odds with myself. This city is a wonderfully diverting one, it can show you too good a time, and make you forget all that keeps you grounded and true. And though I like losing myself in it’s slow whirlwinds now and then, I always need to come back to the quiet corners and soft, patient moments, where there is nothing to prove and no one to impress. No masks to don, no conversation topics to avoid. No need for speech, no need for thought, just the breathing in and out, and the tasting, and the smell of the salt in the air, and the shadows cavorting on the walls like the dearest lovers.

I hear Billie Holiday sing over the speakers…
No one here can love or understand me,
Oh, what hard luck stories they all hand me,
Make my bed and light the light,
I’ll be home late tonight,
Blackbird bye bye.

And I tell her I understand, and I tell her it’ll be alright. Because the poets of the nighttime sky haven’t lost their gifts just yet. And she puts her arms around me and sings me to sleep, and makes sure I don’t dream at all…