I’m releasing this into the ether…

I thought when I brought out the cast,
it might be painful, too raw.
Watching them parade before me,
through a roomful of people,
all the colors that I had painted
one year ago.

the colors of
hippies, peace,
music, beatniks,
and Love.
(They were dictated to me and I accepted them gladly.)

And Feste.
Feste that sang the folk music
that narrated the play.
I imagined
the songs of love
that you played for me.

I thought I wouldn’t be able to look into his painted face.
The plaid shirt, brown locks
I curled around his ears
(like yours, and like mine),
the guitar with which he sang the story.

Because,
When I rendered Feste, I rendered you.
You,
you were my Guthrie, my Dylan,
my clown musician.

You made me believe that art,
that music,
could save us.
(and poetry could ruin us.)

But the drawing was still smiling,
and I was still smiling,
because I know you’re going back to that guitar.
Strumming out the melody
of the life you feel
you lost hold of.

So play your music.
Work out the song
that you want your life to sing.
And sing it.

If it’s the same song, sing it.
If it’s a different song, sing it.
Even if it has to be
a song
I don’t know the words to.

Because I love you.
And it’s your happiness I miss,
and your happiness I will celebrate,
when you can strum it out again.

*This was a “poem” written more than a year and a half ago.  It was an exercise in futility. I’m publishing it because, it’s just been sitting on my computer all this time, 28 KB of increasing irrelevance.