Thursday, March 26, 2015

Journal 59 - Promethean Phoenix

I missed my rooftop kiss in flights of callow and
ignorant fancy - fancying myself not a tease but not an
indulgent twenty-something either. This accomplished
quite the romantic feat - basically an exercise in masochistic
annihilation of the desire for a future penguin or wolf.
You know it's said we aren't the only ones who mate for
life; though we're devolving to our carbon cousins in
this ritual of congruence. It's hard to deny the self.
We know single raised children, particularly those of
divorce are worse off in the long run but still we divorce
over 50% of the time. We know the cigarette is toxic and
a carrier of cancer, and yet even with the tobacco companies'
advertising against themselves they still mint money like
a third-world country. We know that alcohol has
more mental disaffects than marijuana  but still we
drown our livers in its inhibiting seductions. I suppose we're
destined to survive in old age divorced and mumbling on
fancy dialysis with brown cracked skin and purple
teeth reminiscing in nursing homes about the lament-
able mistakes we knew we were making. The good old
days are myths we arrange for ourselves like religion
philosophy and politics. The good old days awaken like
a phoenix in the recesses of our dying embered mind,
cawing with bright sparks of breath illuminating that
forsaken memory like gold in a dark tunnel underneath the
storm cloud draped sky, a storm-ridden sky dropping
dirty drops of rain upon an impatient and frustrated crowd
of posh pedestrians. The phoenix rising is a perennial sign of
hope in this crowded world. The smile and the conversation
of that loud table in the bar or restaurant laughing with
great boisterous laughs is a spy for hope. A sentinel reminding
us that sunny sweaty days aren't the end of our burnt
lives. Rain is a cocktail for the soul and light cloud
streaked blue skies are sincere glimmers of the promise
our parents made when we were children damaged for the
first time. That promise of another chance at the rooftop kiss
clings to the back-plane of my memory like a faint magnetic
charge on the hard disk from a deleted file - waiting for the
right image to accost and rearrange it so it flames like the
Promethean Phoenix.


5.22.09

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