Dreams are haunted by the unforgiving…
Those dark judgemental eyes:
Turning away.
Fuck you!
The unforgiving have a prison to the unforgivens key. When the unforgiven pray to God. They hear the unforgivings plea. The unforgiving has a prison that’s dark and bitter deep. When the unforgiving prays to God, then neither one can sleep…
Chances were the premium at the chances store.
Called up their proprietor and asked for just one more.
Inside information suggested relocate.
When they closed the chances store, it sealed the users fate.
With no plans for the future and the future, it is here.
Who knew that the sun would rise and whisper last nights fear?
So we headed for the highway, which ended at the light.
Looked upon arrival, no chances store in sight.
Searching for the answers that will ease the fears.
Some will stand there crying and find few are buying tears.
All are someone’s baby lost along the way.
Strangers and sojourners who have lost the need to pray.
And I say, “Pray”
Dennis Mantin
The day the voice moved in with me, he brought his good friend fear.
Said ‘We all share your heart and soul you’ll soon forget we’re here.’
The day the voice moved in with me, peace and sleep moved out.
The addict he was at the door, and the voice he jumped to shout.
Said, ‘We like you we like it here, we know you like us too
And we know you’ll like our friends, cause true friends are so few.’
The voice would talk for hours about nothing much at all.
And all the noise would wake the fear and the drunk would wake withdrawal.
Years had passed in tears and stains and I had to kill the fear.
The voice he left in the middle of the night, said he didn’t like it here.
The voice returns sometimes when I sleep but he’s gone when I’m awake.
The strength it took to kill the fear was more than he could take.
And the drunk is with the addict and they live from coast to coast. And sometimes when I pray to God, I pray you’re not their host.
Singing, ‘We like you, we like it here, we know you like us too. And we know you’ll like our friends cause true friends are so few.
–Dennis Mantin
My mother was a Scottish Protestant from Cape Breton, and my father was an Irish Catholic from Halifax…
Naturally, my first joke was…
“I was the only person in my neighborhood who could say for certain that he wasn’t the product of incest!”
Their relationship was doomed from the beginning, stewed in that ancient religious war where both sides worshiped or mostly didn’t worship the same God.
By fluke my mother and I ended up living in this small community where we were outsiders, not related to anyone and everyone there seemed to be family.
A D.N.A. test shows that my Great Great Great Grandmother was born there. I asked an old friend, a local genealogist, if that meant I was related to some of the people who had the most common last name? He said, “No. It means you’re related to them all.”
Then he added, “You were right where you should have been. “
I have not gone hungry.
My bed is flat and large and firm.
I have experienced that elusive love you all seek and dream of.
I have been granted the gift of getting old.
The complaints have not yet begun.
Another day, sundown.
Another night, sundown.
Orange to black, sundown.
Fades to midnight blue.
There’s nothing I can’t do.
And here comes the night
And I don’t know why
I hear your voice
And I lose my way.
Where are you now?
Can I touch you somehow?
You’re somewhere near sleep where images fade.
And here comes the sun.
Another night is done.
Here comes the sun.
And here I go again.
Saw the man, shot down.
Heard his voice, shot down . Eyes rolled white, shot down. Breathe goodbye that sound. Fades to midnight blue. There’s nothing I can do.
Another day shot down.
Another night shot down.
Orange to black.
Shot down.
Fades to midnight blue.
There’s nothing I can do.
DENNIS MANTIN
There’s this feeling that’s just so nearly…
Like the battered and the bruised.
I wonder if I heard clearly.
Deep down, I’m just confused.
There’s a man who’s screaming something.
In the face of that sad clown.
There’s a juggler in the spotlight.
That didn’t use the right pronoun.
The siamese twins grow tired.
Two heads can not agree.
Cooperation is required.
No discernments they can see.
The wives they seem so angry.
The husbands have that look.
Doesn’t much matter which way I go.
Either way, I’m on the hook.
And the men
I don’t know why my baby loves clowns.
Whose painted on tears never fall down.
I don’t know what she sees in their eyes
Perhaps the line between horror/surprise…
I don’t know why my baby can’t sing.
Why carnival music isn’t her thing.
It fills my head when I’m at the fair.
Searching for clues in clowns everywhere.
I don’t know why she screams at night.
I hope it’s not why she holds me so tight.
Because I’m the type I’m weak for love.
Carnival music I rise above.
Is it the pain or is it the tears?
For some carnival crime from yesteryears.
Maybe it’s you, maybe I’ll never know.
Maybe it’s me, baby let go.
(chorus)
Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the kings horses and all the kings men.
Tried and they tried but she fell down again.
Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
She went to her shrink ended up at the mall.
Humpty Dumpty wanted it all.
Dennis Mantin
In the beginning… I saw glimpses of what you might call normal in the living rooms and kitchen tables of schoolyard friends. Those friendships never lasted for me, and in time, they ceased to exist even in memory…
My behavior? I guess it was odd. Angry and loud. Sullen and sad or boisterous and much too much. The invitations dried up and faded fast. “He is strange.” I often heard.
I was tolerated as a boy. Feared in larger shoes. I moved a lot. Shifting. Fading. Reappear like mist in smoke. Spent some time in the shadows there… with others going nowhere… and found out I didn’t fit there either.
“You are strange.” I was told.
“What is this strange you speak of? I have nothing to compare with, really. I do not know this comparative myth of normalcy.”
In time, I grew quiet and introspective and listened to wise counsel who told me the source of my strange. I was childish, emotionally sensitive, and idealistic… and oh, so angry.
I looked into this; faced my fears, and asked for spiritual help.
Things are so much better, and I am far from normal. Being a bastard has shaped me. I couldn’t be with normal friends. Normal girls wouldn’t date me. They all let me know by rejection that I wasn’t worthy. This is what not having a father creates…
When I was a kid in the 1960s, the farmers could be heard lamenting about a changing world that they feared.
Beautiful stone cobbled streets of small towns were replaced with “The Shopping Mall Generation!” AND cities grew. “Who would grow the food?” The farmers asked.
But did anyone see this coming down the pike? A generation so smart that they make money while they sleep?
A generation who became so important that not having children became for them, the best option. Which is probably the best thing since we can no longer determine genders…
I am not afraid. I am not in control. I am embarrassed… or am I entertained?
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