I once soared beyond the pale,
well beyond the mundane and ordinary.
I remain there forever.
I am not of them and they know not
of me or mine.
Once having soared,
we can never be happy on the ground.
It’s why the good die young,
burning and shining and
crashing to the ground in spectacular fury, while
the shadows laugh at our folly.
Most of my friends have settled down,
comfortably,
at ease with the choices that they made,
I hope a few died young and
never had to live long enough to
live the compromise.
I was twelve and thirteen when Janis and Jim died,
eleven years after Buddy Holly and ten years
before John Bonham and John Lennon.
I was only five the year that Robert Frost died and three when
Ernest blew his brains out.
Cobain called it quits when I was 36.
I’ve almost lived his lifetime and Jim’s too.
Sylvia gassed herself at 31,
the year that Frost was busy dying and
I was only beginning.
I came to ground of my own free will, but
that does not guarantee happiness, but I never wrote
a damned thing while
high or happy.
Now I am neither happy or ever high and
writing the shit every day, just like before but
not, because the world has moved on.
It’s a beastly thing, writing and bleeding
all over the page and still,
I can’t tell you what happened when I was five, but I remember in November
the President visited Dallas and Walter cried and mom passed out
while ironing,
something happened in the neighbors’ basement,
we all die a little every day,
some choose not to.
Mike Carson
7-8-2009
