See this old skin, see these baggy eyes, see this plastic smile and lions grin?
Let the ceremonies begin.
See this dragon walk, breathe into a bastards lung, see the wall of blue inching in?
Let the crest of the wave carry me home- let the loser win.
Now watch as we all dive in to this spectacular display
It’s a mirrored image of a dismantled page, of a disenfranchised slave
Of a parade of misdirected saints, all running the wrong way to the end of the race.
It’s a ceremony, all of us new, born.
The wrench in my mind, has unwinded my clock,
And has pushed me back to when I couldn’t talk and I couldn’t walk
And couldn’t hold a pen in my hand,
Couldn’t sleep, and saw a bridge, and this is where I used to live,
Alone in an alley, with a vaudeville tramp, living for something I couldn’t quite grasp,
Just a handful of scraps, put into a loose-leaf binder,
Where the welcome were unwelcome we begin to rewind here,
Where the soul of a misfit, was hung at the gallows and darkness lifted
And the sun stole our shadows, and brought them to a place where pen and misfit made
A new ceremony for old skin, and the band it played,
On and on, and on and on,
And Leonard took the stage,
And that was the dream and I guess it still is, from two poets, two lovers, two slaves.
All taken away by the crest of a wave, listening softly to the silence it saved.

 

Jason Wright is the founder and Editor of Oddball Magazine. His column appears weekly.