Poetry / The '95 Vintage

Dreams are the best I can conjure now.
The faded Tobasco tie stifles any recollections.
Any hint of a concise instant of my past
now as unattainable in my head
as they are to grasp in my calloused hands.

Friends long since folded into the fray and dead.
The web, though world wide,
never sticky enough to bind us shoulder to shoulder.
Somewhere their rapturous spirits are mere mortar
for brick walls that divide us from the loving bedrock
and the insanity that launched us occasionally from mortal earth.

Smiling, I think of the legality of '95.
Weathered soul by then
yet finally a legal participant in the say.
Elixir mixer evenings. The happiest of hours.
Ice and belly fire tumbling ensheathed in metal and glass.
The life of the corporate sponsored party.
Can still pour a topshelf blind-folded.
The auto-pilot Absolut ambassador-
friend, troubadour, sage, wingman, dealer, healer, shotgun, Lothario.
Eager with the lighter, wit as quick
as the succinct snap of the silver Zippo's snap.
My God, I loved even the shiteous of moments.

Then there would be the occasional hitch on the urban front.
Ankle deep in used plastic,
battered flour my wage ticket
Medium rare with a baker my advance.
Friday night brothers assault the tops
be they coming in first date lovers
rioutous ochos celebrating the precious achievement
even the pairs of chicken fingers for the 2.1 lil 'uns.
Fierce rapport among this grain of salt
and the black peppers that season
each and every neighborhood Southern kitchen
with its own trademark logo.

When the blood and sweat was hosed away,
there was revelry.
Dimestore deals in the breakroom yielding
eager redeye flights into those late nights.
The best hours were those when all you met
shared the sense of cunning for the game.
Quick trips to the latenight laserlight gumbo pot.
Diversity of ingredients rendered into singular pieces
boiled into pairs over emerging flames
seasoned with beer and herb.
The best meals served
with a disco bisquit while you waited.

Sweet melting pot of sounds for the era.
Fresh Floyd pulsing from the tour.
Synaptic helter-skelter mind jumble
Acid was Lord six more hours later
on an average Thursday night.
Gin and juice greasing the gears of the down.
Beck absolving winners of their guilt.
We could come as we were and rape our idols,
until the moody flannel duke
who swore he did not have a gun
had enough of his duchess in April.
Nails scratching my eyes out on my way
so much closer to God than I had dreamed possible.
Retro dips into the tape deck conjure
rockgod still commanding me to exult
promising there was yet to be a place beyond me
where the grass was greener
and the girls so much prettier.

Comraderie only felt in the fresh gaze of strangers thrust
forth into that modicum of ridiculous depravity.
Of course there were rises and falls within the ranks.
Sometimes the bumps on teeth chattering tracks
overwhelmed even the most diligent of riders
long numbed by their travels between diligent clarity
and self-loathing fuck-it-all.
Ebbs and flows of eager loves
some for only a sprinkling of hours.
Cupid, Dionysis, Pan and Aphrodite firing their quivers askew.
Bad shit going down, in emotional excess.
Back-stabbing and perception of such.
Always the veiled threat of the fronted bunk.
Yet the days went on as such.
My brothers in yarns soldiered on happy or ignorant
of the realistic world sprawling around us.
After all, there was knee-boarding to do.

But as the greys appeared,
my special accepted lovingly
the task so many before had failed to accomplish,
times, in perennially relevant Dylan terms,
were a-changin.
Far now in distance and mood
from those familiar haunts,
long since the daily faces of friend and foe
dissolved into a mental mural so massive, layered
a psychic scion in a thousand years
could not single out an instant of
particular poignacy,
I roll onward aloof yet mundane.

Only on the odd random night
when the stars twinkle and dart around each other
the fresh drip of barley pop tingles the happy throat
when now classic rock erupts with just the perfect intro
illicit campfire smoke lingers upon my being
and I reflect briefly, flirting with that old flame discreetly.
a brief beaming revelation
about the most frivolous yet formative
sum of my parts.

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