Byline: The Brink of Eternity

Buford Youthward
stockcap@hotmail.com

With mean things on my mind I get down, allow time to unravel, secure mysteries, compose music, and search for solace while my lost soul continues to lose.

I cancel out missed misfortunes, the ironies of catching swine flu on the hand sanitizer, the car accident caused by someone trying to put on their seat belt and all the other right things that happen for seemingly wrong reasons.

Grabbing a can off the shelf, I detonate a destructive impulse to create, manipulate, mask and apply conceit, then shake vigorously. The hand, the eye, the heart are slow to act, react but make due like a robot to melody.

The meanderings of the man are as impotent as poetry and nowhere near as important as imported wine. Over time the ego stroke of poor kids from the ghetto trying to get their get on becomes stale, like hip hop or beat poetry. Some shit just doesn't age well.

Experts usually have closed minds and misplaced idealism is usually code for cynicism. Dancing on the brink of eternity I keep trying to stay in the mode of not knowing, manifesting myself for the good of the universe and admiring the work not the men that make it.

The lust of a royal heart thwarts the thwarted, deprives the knave and the naïve. Depraved but longing for good times and good will, the badness beats down like sunshine and rain on so many beaten paths. Truth and honesty are mutually exclusive say the kings in my kingdom.

The vagaries of human responsiveness play games on artists, admen and administrators trying to educate the emotionless. Critical injury and passive thought take up space in between traffic tickets, trash days and unsettled contracts.

King Kong and the Godzilla jug band play their symphonies under summer suns, winter moons and all the seasons in between spelling out a vocabulary of violence, emotional meltdowns and slow burns, sharp turns and times to relearn.

I listen to the lyrics, unlearn good habits, resist the temptation to over paint and continue to judge books by their cover.


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