The Backwards Town

 

To forget about life, he could not. For all it was worth in the needle’s eye, for what could be neatly packaged in boxes. A perspective of the lonesome, somewhat a bland ghost roaming the halls of reverberation.

He would often cajole in verses as if his entire room were a lampshade, an inner force not sought by dark or light, but a hesitation within his mind that he had lived like a ghost, not a man, but a negation of what he thought hurt and believed was love. It never presupposed itself to him. It never gave love. For some equaled none and love was a nun’s paradise, an ending rhyme, forgotten between the lines.

“He never thought about her unless he was listening to Air Supply”, and I kept thinking that repetitive thought, printed and processed a thousand times, a fossilized memory of usual courtship.

Days are shorter, as the filmmaker is in a sudden hurry, to run away with the news, the answer. No cold feet for a writer, everything is still, saving a breath for tomorrow.

I could not cut the scene. It was too human, too authentic and predictable. The scene bled like the warm comfort of molasses. The glass scene did not do it for me.

The Scene is closed to due repairs, but we will gladly accept your invitation the next round.

He was in his room lifting weights and preparing for the unknown, that semi-conscious mile. The reasons were dry in steel grasp of oxygen dependence, his life’s cocaine. The long walk was pretty long and he needed his asthma inhaler. Sweat hung loose upon his brow.

 

                                He spent the night in tall grass thinking about the war spirits. He had partial Native American blood. It did not matter whatever items left him displaced and unfocused, for the contours of his room left him to the agents of heritage and fortune.

 

He withdrew his magic purple sword against the fire contender.

 

 

He stepped onto the broad bridge of reluctance, but every color blushed his sway

Every number agreed with him and disagreed

 

Yellow followed dispute with orange

Because orange disagreed with the symbolism

 

He hid behind the rain.

The rain tiered

Pointing like repetitive needles

The broken record of romance

 

He took refuge into the sweet apples

And the rhythms of disjointed Jazz

 

After the long walk, he picked his sermon and offered solace to the sweat on his brow. After long passages there came photographs and drinks

Passages of a concert and the instruments were strewn in dismal space, like corners of a closet with forgotten lace.

He waited.   

 

 

 

He waited some more.

 

And yet, He waited again.

 Page after pages like slim walks

A narrative closed in runways

In passing, like the national news

Turned local and into hysteria

Of the perceptive actor

 

The man on the street, not likened to exposed winds

 

To cold of a distance to retain food

A scoundrel of society

Waiting like a disposed flag

Whom the surrender forged under false pretense

 

Waiting for comfort

Waiting for nature’s handshake

The ends of necessity he did not know

Could not fabricate his collage

 

Like the cloth in hand

And the mirror as his shield

From whence he shaved his face

His procuring face

Shaping the development to match the shadows

 

Stanzas are addressed for polite reason

Necessity drawn in lust for the knight who waits

But it is I who waits

 

Not in meter, measure or rhyme

I come in a headdress to perform the dance

So that the words accord to the address

 

Angled not with the reforms of society

He took off his headdress

And released the disjointed rhyme

The likes of an individual

Who eats with no ills at all

 

He pirates out to sea

Suburban life on the course

Wheeling the abstraction

Blue contours and green waters

Musky in return of what is unfavorable

Costly but all the same

 

The backward town had

A barbershop, a new blockbuster video that just hit the wings of Canton Street. Music, I recall in this little town, possessed its’ own plurality of the visitors that inhabited here fifty-years ago. Elvis was here and the banquet friendly quartet, behold all the friends whom participated in this elaborated, courted affair. 

 

“Please Master I dream one more night.”

 

“It is I who say is right you pathetic mule. You bear-bare face of the devil’s snout.

The face is everywhere in this misty carnival, even in your breathing I adhere anticipation, the glory of faces, of a new monster.

 

…IT WAS I AS A CHILD, in even christening, as the stars stall bright,

I say, “Walk away, more power when the distance is that great.” There

The James Mansfield portfolio came across from me on the T.V. screen

 

I summoned my all knowing, poetic, dirty from the streets, cleaning up the dirty work

To make-up for the dirty, clumsy work… 

 

IA M A M an, a, wilted woman upon the quilted, quaint of a lovely evening

Blanketed by the sun,

Afraid of the tiger, and the habitual tigers

Appear in gregarious moments

Transformation upon a century in the minute.

A minute, minute in the strand odd survival and love, of forward and practice,

Too make the practice perfect like a math equation understood,

 

To be the Universe, unruly

Like the matted backyard with full of earth to covet the very brains, hearts,

Hope and happiness, a blanket that the truth will spree, down highway 92,

Ever spilling package of the motor breathe down the street and in the plaster

He holds all things together,

 

The true Man is a pirate,

Finding the longing vessel hole,

The last stop in the rules of right of action.

 

 

He holds his plank and does what the dirty pirate says,

 

…. He jumps…..

 

But is he defined by emotional questions marks, or conniving commas,

Or the deceitfulness of the colon and semicolon, was it his sentence that led to his triumph

Of where to land? Where to stop and become the realistic landmark ghost I have always

Begun on mountain tops and times of glaciers, I always nodded of good behavior but frill and fidget my bodily strays, up, down left and right, persona taking advantage of my free will and the call- some –of-the-wild speech, and the ramparts of the city speak their representation.

 

I was a child

Standing relentlessly in the cold.

The pictures were a bark .

Some cold and some a medium hot in the cold winter

Afternoon in a late-delay of March over Sumter.

 

The passerby relents the awakening

And the town becomes one bright rainbow

Of aesthetic hews and jazz dancing,

Silence like a rainbow felt unkind,

There is silence here

 

In this family motif,

Of caring and sharing amongst the

the Silent

 

Lament the light post on Lake Avenue

And the shuffling of lake Ponchartrain

From the Gulf of Mexico

Leaves the station today.

 

“Here It is, in the steel

Of a railway station, my momma

Said she would meet me fifty years ago.”

 

 

Later in the comforts of Mississippi Long moss, and crickets that dream the loss of the sky that inhabits the common birdcall of the south.

 

“Baby, you are suppose to pick these fur babies off this plant.” The grandfather clause of picking cotton said.

 

“The Bull has set his feet, only I know fertile stories of cowboys, bull rides and stories of the south,

 

WAS The Myth of Nina really true?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Jenny Davis]

Brilliant IS the key word, Lionel. I couldn't believe all the noise on the page as I read this, so much going on, so much to see and feel. You are a gifted writer, my friend...excellent :)

[T. R. Writer]

THIS SUCKS! Wait, isn't this opposite day? Just kidding, this is really great and really brilliant. You truly have a unique voice that shines throughout this wonderful piece. This was really creative and truly shows your creative genius. Some pieces I read I'm like "that was okay" and others I'm like "that was great" and a very select few, like this one, makes me say "that is on a whole 'nother level of creativity and brilliance". Wonderful job.

[Blackbirdsong]

My god Lionel this is brilliant. You are truly a genius...I can't begin to tell you which part of this is my favorite because the whole thing is just so gloriously written. I love how it flows from place to another and it feels effortless like a waking dream. You really should think about doing a book of poetry or something sometime soon and this should definitely be one of the poems you use. Seriously.