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.

Courtesy of Rubba Boots Photography © 2009