Devils Old & New

Walking this dark water's edge...

As Dicky Betts sings of somesuch devotion to some another; and to a river where we had both become those near extinct creatures of an imperfect wilderness that do not seek redress, by such grim profanity anymore than a camouflage to hide the scent and every trace of its humanity behind a pretty mask

A beautiful phantom haunts this river...

Faceless as a dream, the great flow of night eddies where those most familiar shadows remind me of who and what I have always been-- a rebel of gravity: to defend against the incursion of any other force of fate or drive other than to breathe the purest inspirations

Nearby has been raised a carnival of salvations...

I have never been sure that they call them revivals; further away are those self-professed priests and ministers rail and rant, farther away from the last truly undiscovered creature I have always known as the Divine... strangers and scholars of an old time religion that do not even know Latin or Greek, Coptic or Aramic. That cannot trace its own histories beyond the latest tangible leather bound volume, a collection of thoughts and reflections-- at times as wicked as any devil their fears could devine of the world's pain

The ghost of Jerry Garcia calms me...

As the Devil may be a friend of mine, for which the only visible form of damnation is the fire I use to light my cigarette-- with every one I recognize my own mortality in those wispy curls of smoke arisen from exhaust of my last addiction that I still feed... I am a leather bound collection of thoughts and reflections-- at times as wicked as any devil my fears could devine of the world's pain

How can any god survive upon a night...

Or even a night for which the truth is lain beyond the small rise of holy hills canvases, muttering in tongues that no one can understand (despite what the Book of Acts had said, that those tongues the apostles spoke were actually known-- and not some ignominous prattle of mono-syllabic baby-talk that makes them feel something more has come to them than the desire to be beloved of the Divine)

My anger piqued, for which I only draw my own poisons in deep, deeper than they may choose to try to save me if they actually knew I was there-- or even truly cared about anything that lied upon the other side of those canvas walls.

It would be only too easy to become their Devil for a night...

To tear away the poles and flimsy walls and leave them expose to the night, to tell them that they cannot see anything when they close their eyes; to everything other than an after-image glowering the painting of the Last Supper than clung to their Grandmother's wall, or the Madonnas they keep in their front yard

There's nothing left to save them from what they believe must be a mystery they cannot understand beyond the latest rendition of a collection of black and/or white

... I have a lingering distrust for Bushes, whether they are burning or not.

"Next voice you hear will be your own"...

Beyond them...

Along this river's rise is an impression that it leads towards civilization and a city with a name and a super-imposed identity of some another old saint. I cannot even consider St. Anthony without the lingering dark images of Hieronymous Bosch. Inside the immense bounds are a collection of peoples, alien and strangers even unto themselves-- save those small clusters that have gathered in the night

I have a certain soft-spot for Dionysius...

Once my favorite devil, perhaps... wine strikes me like rancid kool-aide. In this god's youth, I had imagined perhaps too much of a rascal; and that like with any other version of god that has come down the pipe-- some took it too far.

What temptation have you never succumb, my pilgrim heart?
That what evil may yield of the flesh is a fairly tough sell. Gambling? The ever so ocassional splash of boozey-ola (lest we not forget the devil's greatest epiphany, rock & roll.)

I am afraid that my own version of the devil is not really very scary...

Something of a collector of God's little broken toys. Still something that seems fair easier to find than salvation in a tent, I only have to go where people are. Within the city are quite a hodge-podge, for which I have acquired something of a keener eye for the Devil...

"I came upon a child of God, walking along the road
and I asked him brother where are you going"...

There is a mad-dog in a bottle of a vagabond travelers wine...

Unleashed and possessed by any whim and every wind that stirs within the night a rambling, shamble eye-sore of humanity wrapped in layers of collected cast-off articles of clothing is a man
that is stopped as the music over-spilled from inside the small bar that serves the reheated left-overs of an age before, with a bottle or a glass of the very same spirit that the beggar had imagined was his own personal hell-hound; driving him down into the depths and darkness of despair

"Got to get back to the land, set my soul free.
We are stardust, we are golden,
we are billion year old carbon,
and we got to get ourselves back to the garden"

I smile as he begins to dance, badly...

With no more sense of where he is or how he is supposed to keep himself hidden away for the comfort of any other passer-by traveler; tourist or denizen of a city named after a dead saint,
that refused and turned away from every temptation for fear of a Devil that may have likely never existed beyond his own imagination

I laugh at his mis-steps...

Cut short as I see one of the city guard of what is purportedly right and just heading directly towards this ram-shackle drifter, whom can not see the troubles he has caused in the obeyance
of a spirit he may have thought lost and buried too deep inside of him to ever feel again-- until tonight, it overcame him with such senselessness

... Apparently, there are rules against this sort of human honesty.

"Well, then can I walk beside you? I have come to lose the smog.
And I feel like I'm a cog in something turning"...

There was no real way to save him...

But to join him there, matching him step for inglorious step in his mad dance sidewalk dance to the old butterfly muszak before the policeman could stop him, he would now have to stop us both. I wasn't drunk, and my simple toss-about clothing apparently a few small grades higher in the social pecking order

A small legend scrawled across my back read, "Purveyor of Freedom"...

Which should have meant something else I guess; but that night, I had thought it might just keep a wino out of the cage where they keep public nuisances; such as this uninhibitted dance of two crazy bastards that made no kind of any logical sense (and I wasn't even drunk, dammit!)

"And I don't know who I am
but I know that life is for learning.
We are stardust, we are golden,
we are billion year old carbon,
and we got to get ourselves back to the garden"...

Apparently, the officer's presence made our lunacy more palatable...

Or safe, as there began to come around us a small crowd of curious, trying to figure out what in the hell was going on-- It was better not to really think of what I was doing, nor how and why we had become the evening's entertainment; so much as to hear the words and the devil's laughter ringing in my ear

..."And everywhere there was song and celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bomber jet planes
riding shotgun in the sky,
turning into butterflies above our nation"...

And I'll be damned if that ole boy in blue didn't jump in alongside, thoguh he might have been a fair better dancer than the old booze-hound and I-- it didn't make any kind of sense, but it really didn't have to; like the three little monkeys, if there was anything evil about what we were doing, none of us knew a damn thing about it. More people were coming by, stopping, staring, pointing, chuckling...

"We are stardust, we are golden,
we are caught up in the devil’s bargain;
and we got to get ourselves back to the garden"

Wasn't much a big finish really, though I have to give ole brother booze-hound an A for effort, the execution was another thing entirely. He leapt up, and I think he was expecting one of us to catch him-- which just didn't happen.

"You alright man?" The cop asked...

And I smiled, before I merged back into life and lost myself in the crowd... time for me to fly, I thought as I moved back to where I had left the river's edge and sat down; and let it wash me away back closer toward a smiling pretty face in a picture that I kept tucked safe in my memory

The soul is a traveler, trying to find its way back home...

It is a fresh sort of smile to think that not only might she have approved of my senseless acts of seeming indifference (though laughter seemed a more likely response)-- it was cool enough to wonder that she might have danced with us too.

Peace,
Po