Sans Souci

Madam, don't raise your brows if I talk to that tramp in the dappled shawl. Etching semicircles in the air with suspended toes and fingers contorting to grasp chords that can't waft within your protective walls...I am tired.

Lord knows that I had enough of pseudo non-conformists and consciously careless trainee hippes who quote Lorca, Morrison and Ginsberg. You have a fire burning between your fingers and when you speak the smoke twirls in patterns infinitely more interesting than what you have to say. And you look like an initiate to a cult...happy to be different...not knowing that the credo was to be indifferent.

So you think bohemians are the glamerous outcasts who watch as smoke rings dissolve into poetry and pain mutate into songs. You thought it was abandoned afternoons in blind alleys with mavericks who wisper in nicotine tinged tones. Street with hushed names where somnolent eyes can gather grace.

But you see the careening bodies later, lurching with delirium as demons thrash them around. You see the vacuous sockets later emptied of their piebald dreams. And do you see the indie artist rummaging his dead friend's pockets for his 'naked lunch'.

And does that frighten you, my friend? Or does that make you sad. It's not much, but I have tried to see this civilized world from dusty sidewalks while talking to fakirs selling copper rings. Walk barefoot on warm streets with naked street childrens or inhale time. Silhouette the taut sky or learn to live sans souci. Read verses and drink raindrops. You have watched that hand on the fretboard but hold it tomorrow when it lies limp.

But Lord knows, I had enough of trainee hippies for bohemianism was never about aping prototypes.