The Wheatfields East of Eden

I sat to take some time to write
I don't know what to say
A flight of fantasy perhaps, some tale,
of angels and demons
of heaven and hell
The heroes, and villains,
the shallow who dwell
the fake birds flutter by
into the pale translucent sky,

Or write about the real world where,
brief memories we strangers share,
the lives we've lived,
the dreams we've had
the days that woeful silent pass
a twisted broken servant’s glass.

The dreams of Eden, dreams of home.
It's not too late to die alone.
no need to bring the pen along
just smile and say Goodbye-
Descend into your bed below,
and in silence eons go
her eyes forgotten, sins erased
I look forward to my death
more than another day.
I've already arranged a will
and scripted out a play.
I can't wait to die.
I'll finally get to meet my maker
and look deep into their eyes
And present my list of whys.

Why do we love?
Why do we pray?
Were we made to act this way?
to fight forever for our lives
If there is no chance of winning
Why should we even try?

I believe when Death sees me
my life will flash before my eyes
I'll see my father,
and my mother
smiling at his side
my little brother's drawing
a cake with candles red which read
Happy Birthday, Brandon
Shouts and breaking bottles
ups and down
a set of eyes, a crying clown
A ballerina with a song
all these things that I have known
gather in one second, flash
they are forever gone.

I stood in the door way, and
sobbing held my father's hand,
I love you too, he said.
One blink living, one blink dead
I stood and shivered in the room
where shadows from narrow trees eerie loomed.
crossed the body from the blinds
and streaked the dead in narrow lines

I stood there for a moment
and I knelt to pray to God,
Keep my love, lest I go too,
I cannot leave my father who,
saved me from my homemade noose,
He did not close his eyes
I held my father's arm
until my mother stumbled in
smudged make up and mascara drunk again.

I felt the stiffness of the limb
and hummed my father's favorite hymn:
He used to say soul shine,
Its better than sunshine,
Its better than moonshine,
Damn sure better than rain.
Hey now people don’t mind,
We all get this way sometime,
Got to let your soul shine,
shine till the break of day

The quivering epithet was set
in stone after a day
I sat in the second row
and heard the preacher pray.
The good Lord Lives,
he gives and takes;
and all of us will meet Destiny
that one appointment we can't break.

I remember the look when his life left his eyes
his muscles eased off and he sighed.
He might have saw the soul shine,
and surely saw the moonshine,
he often saw the rain.
But he never saw the sun again.

On the elevator to the lobby
What I once called God forgot me.
Then I understood the fall
Our only God forgot us all.
I look at people
cats and dogs
I look at them and sigh
as beautiful as they might be
someday they had to die

Some for crimes and some by chance
some for money and romance
but they all walk the way
in a singing row
they listless go
to dim when dies the day.

A thousand tragedy's a day,
Romeo wasn't the only man
who had to die that way
For Juliette's whose auburn hair
stole Romeo's soul as would a snare
on time the hour came:
Their words of beauty
languid lines
fell to pieces and with time
withered away with the page.

My romance has been a dance
with words and tones and rhyme
I've lived more on the page
than I have outside the lines.
All of my skies are ink drop lies
The gravel roads when young were long
Hank William sang we sang along
then later in my life I roamed
the dirt roads in the night alone
when he was almost five years gone

I ride those dirt-roads still
and play
Mad Season, Long Gone Day
We fall with the rain and wash away
to a place where all who go
never return and never know

will they blink out like a light
a lightning bug on a summer night
or leave the confines of the mind
leave the body out of time
into a golden field to find
the faces of the deathless still alive.

I thought of my childhood when
in vain I tried to find
The holy grail, some peace of mind
some genuine happy memory
a joy filled day of mine.
When I was ydoung, when life was fun,
but when I ended up alone,
twenty and on my own
Between the needles in the silence
a voice inside came on:
and in my ears, I heard the song
that once with my father I sang along
The song had faded with the time
and turned into the sound of Mozart
as heard by a mannequin mind.

On that obsolete 8 track
a lilting requiem came back
in the song the old man sang
a simple and elegant melancholy refrain
The tape slowed to a stop.
I looked at the hourglass
prepared another shot.

The face comes back, the day he died,
I sat in my room and cried,
and felt an empty, vacant spot
like a man whom God forgot
The day he passed brought up the past
The same old man, whose loving hands
had saved me from an orphanage
I vowed that day to prove
to my acting family
they didn't adopt a fool.

The hollow spot
filled with a shot
fake happiness and then
nodded off and often thought
of loves who cared, who often shared
their laughter and their fears
who with the leaves of time,
they change
they ran together in the rain
and passed in but a breath
and left
To be an urn upon the shelf.