Listening to the Grateful Dead,
and you are dead.
And I once knew what it meant
to be gratefully dead.
It was a manic afternoon, I wanted to play to you.
It all made sense. You weren’t dead.
I could see you in the ether,
the faint outline of you.
It was in this moment I realized you were not dead.
I was grateful for that moment.
I woke up in a hospital bed, two days after,
manic as ever, lamenting heaven,
stepping through the corridors
of the sanitarium,
listening to the footsteps,
the manic, breathless footsteps,
the acid trip, turned ugly,
as I came back down to earth
and realized that I could never see you again.
You were dead.
Grateful as I might have been.
I only now, lamented in mourning
your loss.
And in this moment, as I recover with coffee,
you are still gone.
And only a faint melody plays in my ear.
And I can meditate for hours, like you would.
And I can read the scriptures that you did.
And I can laugh and reminisce, but you are gone.
And that is a hard fact.
A pill brought me back to that realization,
You are gone, and I am a manic man,
medicated from the sun, and tranfixed by the moon.
And maybe in dreams I will see you,
the time spent to bring you back.

 

Jason Wright is the editor and founder of Oddball Magazine. His column appears weekly. His new book is Train of Thought.