We’ve been in the battle royal.

Taking chin shots in our stride.

Telling myths so we don’t spoil.

Laughing loud, the truth inside.

It is such a lie, all this beauty.

Of Kings, Whores and Lonely Men.

No more joy. Accounts and duty.

Bite your tongue and count to 10.

Having thoughts lots about dying.

And other things that I don’t know.

Its not the fear that’s got me down.

Just that I don’t want to go.

Now sure I know I have no choice.

Has been made abundant and clear.

This transformation is all the rage.

I just kinda like it here.

I hear all this complaining.

What’s wrong about this and that.

You never really stood a chance.

With an attitude like that.

I recognized my nature.

Not much was steeped in good.

There was this strange sensation.

Like maybe I just should.

Forget it all and start a new.

Take the narrow view to wide.

Take my head out from my ass.

And maybe look outside.

Not all is gain or glory.

Not all is pain and strife.

The road the path the choices made.

It’s a wild ride this life.

She gave me many gifts. Though none were intended as such. When I thought I could get no higher, she pulled out the rug and removed the mask, and let me see the truth. I have not been the same person since. How many of us can draw that line and say this is who and what changed me?

I wonder if she had a choice? I am beginning to think that this was beyond her control. However, really, I don’t know.

She removed the kindness from me. I am no longer the gullible and needy sap ready to give at the drop of a hat. I have that great ability for savageness that so few come to embrace, for now I see that weakness for what it is.

To know intimacy with both sides of the same coin. The light and the darkness. What a gift!

I still have the pause button. The ability to walk away. To maintain the ability to fight another day. To not cross that line. I’m afraid if I ever started, I might not be able to stop.

Few are wrapped as tight as Frothy.

No awareness to calm down.

Got stranded on the mainline.

On his way to meet up town.

There were words with the conductor.

Who had clearly had enough.

The Conductor is on the evening news.

He’s been traumatized and stuff.

Transit commission they are hiring.

The trees are forming buds.

And Frothy is in recovery.

Plotting pay back, blowing suds.

I can’t say I’m shocked. I didn’t expect less complaining. However, I did think there might be more gratitude.

I understand human nature for what it is: undeniable selfish.

I was told: ‘You will know a new freedom and a new happiness. You will be amazed before you are halfway through.’

Well, I must be nearing the halfway mark because I am truly amazed.

I watched her rise and fall over our sleepy little town. That dead rock in the sky, that shines over us all… Who knows the secrets here? Where? Where everyone pretends that nothing happens.

The warm salt waters of the Gulf Stream flow north from Mexico, along the eastern continental shelf, passed Cape Breton and beyond. Cold arctic air sweeps down over frozen tundra and bristles raised hairs on hunched backs, along Labrador and into the Northumberland Strait. Where these 2 meet is a spit of land that rises out of the Atlantic, just north of New York City, and is formerly known as New Scotland. It’s because of this; the north winds and the south currents that the conversations here are usually always about the weather…

To an outsider, it would appear as if nothing else goes on here but the weather. However, appearances are deceiving. Nothing is as it seems…

Reminds me of the old joke… A man from the city asks a fisherman, “What do you do around here for excitement.”

The fisherman smiles, ” In the summertime we fish and we fuck. In the winter, we don’t fish. “

The north coast of Nova Scotia is somewhere between the middle of nowhere and God’s country.

Somehow, I was still there when I was 18, and she’d been dead for 7 years. I would still look for her whenever I was in a crowd of people. Straining searching. Imagining that she had faked her death to get away from me. My mother. By the fall of 1977, I guess I figured she was really dead. All of this I kept to myself. Winding wrapped tight. In my tiny bedroom on a twin bed in a mobile trailer on an acre of land at the edge of Deception River is where the nightmare began…

I ripped out the window screen at the foot of the bed one night and the screen at the head of the bed the next. Screaming some nonsensical rage about “I’ll get you! You motherfuckers!” The next morning the fingernails were torn and bloodied from ripping out screens. Both windows smashed.

I could hear the breathing coming from something somewhere. I held my breath and lay still on my bed, making sure it wasn’t me. I looked under the bed and under the trailer. Nothing. I was alone… except for whatever was breathing. It felt like it was coming from inside me. I had never been so terrified. I forgot to pray. I forgot God.

After a few days and nights of this, I realized that I had to leave that bed, that bedroom,that trailer, that acre, that river.

I left and never returned…

I tried to be a humanist.

I just never found that grove.

All that whining at the get-go.

Had to bounce and bust a move.

I tried things less than spiritual.

More like carnal, some call lust.

Perhaps a search, a thing called love.

I just couldn’t find the trust.

All this searching has a fortune.

Maybe one that’s hard to see.

Down a path I wouldn’t recommend.

Some things you can’t unsee.

I’ve been listening to the masses.

They be trying to bring me down.

I’ve been taking master classes.

Ever since the blues dropped into town.

They are talking about oppression.

Like, it’s shiny and brand new.

So much horror in that lesson.

That ironic cake to chew.

They are raging, eyes are blurry.

Tears they fall like April rain.

Going nowhere in such a hurry.

Like they just discovered pain.

I’ve been looking for a chorus. That won’t break us into songs. Maybe something just to bore us. Take our rights back from the wrongs…