A Penny for the Old Guy

contemplation

I once dreamt of sailing to Byzantium-

The seas were plastic wastelands,

We fed on fish that tasted of corroded batteries

And chewed on dirty beer bottles

To rid the taste,

And when we reached the shores

We swigged from that Merlot,

Sang The End and laughed at Tartarus and Elysium

Caught in a Chinese finger trap

 

And I sometimes think when I smile

I look like Morrison in a bathtub

Printed over a picture of Pere Lachoise-

Gone but not forgotten-

Like Shakespeare copying Ovid’s

Tombstone in numeric qualities.

 

I’ve only one Mecca

And it lies not in a dream, a pen, a swollen flask or a photograph,

But in her, this you know, for yours is the same,

But how much can we take and how long can we wait?

How much change can we bring before our

Welcome to the Machine destiny?

How many Hemingway sunsets and Bukowski bottles

Until the children with heroin in their sand buckets notice?

Who’s to say our Guineveres won’t turn Medusas

And turn our concrete dust bloodstreams to stone?

 

But you’re right, I will turn to you

And remind you why we are here

And you’ll do the same

For me

Even if we freeze for eternity

With a chalkboard roach or

A cheap cigarette hanging from our lips

Because we are not Hemingway, Eliot or Bukowski-

We are hollow men

Who rob the banks

Of fates last chance

 

Foolish?

No.

Selfish and selfless,

And if Fermi and Oppenheimer

Could fuse the two words

Into some sort of atomic bomb sheathed in love

I’d set it off.

My soul sails with you

So forget Cobain’s shoe box of a world

And we’ll sail those very torn seas-

We will share the same body bag

And the same shallow grave

Where the stale rain washes the red clay

Into our hollow bodies,

And we’ll take the same walk to whatever

Kingdom reigns on this,

Or we’ll disappear into nothing.

 

So… Timshel-

There is no choice when it comes to choice