5 years.

life can be funnier than a motherfucker.
little jokes
like stepping in a hole and falling down
slamming your thumb in a car door
getting punched in the mouth in a bar for hitting on the wrong girl.

eastern philosophies teach that the universe is cyclical.
mandalas
the wheel of time
reincarnation
yin yang:
two sides to everything.

I can smell bullshit a mile away.

that's like being punched in the gut
by an old friend
then offered a shot of whiskey
you couldn't swallow anyway.

there is something suddenly surprising about it all.

to find yourself in the same boots you were wearing
in your youth when shit was easy and the money was good.

(I had been a vagrant of sorts
I was, it seemed, a man lost
in his own skin.
the days of my youth
spent outside decent society,
hard and cold and dirty,
full of piss and vinegar.
I was more comfortable
in a tavern
dark and smoky,
my saber at my side and my soul ready to fly.
I was a sunset of sorts;
always sinking
my light diminishing
with each passing moment.
thus it was inconceivable,
in any proper society,
that a Queen would lay her eyes upon me
and see only a man who wanted to be good.)

but now
with the tired feet
of five years walking in circles
constantly scanning the horizon
for a target of opportunity
(or at least a way home)
and finding only the fallen corpses
of your maybes and coulda beens,
something akin to your dreams,

you find that
it keeps you up at night
trance like
listening to trip hop
bangin’ on a keyboard
in the dark
stone cold sober
wishing for a bong hit or a rail
wishing for a shot or a beer…

a sweaty wet blowjob from a nobody she-devil in an alcohol dress.

(it must have been some kind of sin
for a worthless scab to be in love with a Queen
but worse yet
or perhaps greatest of all
for her to love him back.)

perhaps this whole time we have only been falling in place
practicing erratic movement
in a linear universe.
trying to discover
the place where fear and weapons meet.
trying to discover
the moment where plummeting and landing become a singular act.

trying to visualize the fission of elements in our life
and decipher mathematics in the fusion
of ideas, or feelings, or hopes,
or some other mystical physical bullshit.

some bullshit we don't really care about anyway.

5 is the number of fiction.
half of our base-ten world view.
a number tied to illumination and dominance.

if you know what I am talking about
you are probably a member of a broken dream like me.
you are probably a lunatic wondering why no one else sees it like you.
you should probably be sleeping right now too.

(when I left there were only stories and legends.
tales of men making names for themselves.
she said she understood,
but this new world was so far
it didn’t seem real.
could it really be so great a thing
as to take me away from her?
I told her I did not know,
as I gathered up my sword and my courage,
but that no distance or time would ever
keep me from her arms forever.)

5 years is not a very long time.
not on any universal scale.
it is less than a whisper,
quicker than a thought,
fleeting as a sex dream in the moment of waking.

the moments though,
the passages of your very finite life,
they stretch out like the sea,
to the horizon,
falling off the edge of the world.

(how do you know the Earth isn’t flat?
she asked)

a moment passes and is cast into the void,
lost to the black of space,
or trapped like a rat
in the sinking ship
you want to call your life.

(tons of Spanish bullion are resting at the bottom of my memory
a present for a Queen,
she was dead before I washed ashore,
dead years before I ever made it home,
child birth had taken her.
my illegitimate son who would have ruled an empire,
my lover an angel on a throne of diamond
with eyes deeper than night
and more dangerous than sabers
or the noose
or the wide open sea.)

it is easy to get lost.
not so to find your way back.

and I stand on white cliffs
calling out to the wind
YOU MOTHERFUCKER!
where were you when I needed you to fly me home.

now
you even refuse
to carry my whispers
to friendly ears.

I am a captain without a crew.
a bullet without a gun.
I am yin after yang ran off with dogma or karma
or some other guy who made her smile.

5 years
is a long time
to have forgotten
who you are.

how lost is lost is lost is lost repeat ad nauseum.

I depress myself
but I keep me alive.
I love myself
but I may soon die.
I kill myself
every time I believe in change or hope or goodness.

I miss myself.

perhaps I need a punch in the gut from an old friend.
or just a shot of whiskey.

perhaps I need a poem
like a kick in the balls;
jarring and provocative,
double me over and make me want to vomit.

5 years is a long time.

(how long did you suffer, my Queen?
did my child ever know my name?
was I a slave then?
an oar man or field worker?
was there more I could have done
leagues upon leagues
from you?
why does no one answer me when I call?
would the King have had me hanged
or would I have put him to the end of my sword,
revenged my love and my son,
all that there was left for me
in this flat pitiless world?
it seems now like such a silly thing
sailing to the end of everything
for gold and victory.)

I must stop counting.

really.

I must stop counting
each second before I find my way home.
how many moments I have wished for fire, for death.
how many steps from my bed to the toilet to piss away bad dreams.
the lines and lines of the dead who have come before me.
the histories of this world, the lies and liars, all.
the beats in this song, the words in every chorus.
the years fallen like ash, black and deep as snow.

5 years is not a long time
to have been living.
and it is far to long
to prepare for dying.

at some point
in some singular moment
all my fallacies
will catch up to me.
all my transgressions
will rear up
dress themselves
in the garb of shock troops
take up arms
and come to evict my heart from the nation of me.

before I know it
I will fall victim
to the revolutionary underground
inside of me.

5 years could me enough to judge the mark of a man:
all the iciness
all the scorn
all the hate
all the anger.
to put him up against the weight of his decisions his actions
and ask for judgment.

(now I think I may be dying
no richer than when I left
and heart broken for having ever gone.
I threw my sword into the sea
after I held it to my neck,
and now I am weak and defenseless in this life.
sometimes I think I hear her voice
rising up from the ocean.
sometimes I think I hear the mob
coming to put me to the rope.
I know that all my wickedness was visited upon her
for ever daring to love me
and that my sentence
was always to be
without her radiance by my side.
I think I am a sunset of sorts,
and now night has fallen,
and tomorrow
I will cease to rise.)

there is
no judgment
no time span
no ethos
no faith
no hope
no hate
no shot of liquor
no dope or coke
no meaningless alcohol fuck
no moment of infamy
no combustion of elements
no lost mystery
no dream or fantasy
no deed
no name
no foolish turn of events
no motherfucker of a joke
no yin
no yang
no mandala
no cross
no nothing

that will ever be greater
than this singular love of a woman
I am terrified I will never see again.

Home -- Poetry

Copyright 2005 -- Scott Kirkpatrick -- All Rights Reserved
May not be used in whole or part without written permission of the Author