midnight in the land of D

i've lost her. to one pill after another, one style after another, one love after another it all wears thin after awhile.

but i remember her, glowing eyes unleashed hope across the earth. kerouac was all the rage and billy holliday was the queen of every soundscape we made together. every scrap made for life made of life brought to life by the way she wringed her fingers together when she was nervous.

we were apostles for the new creeds, bringers of the sky mind open heart surgery for the world bring every glance home and tear the skull apart so you can build your own.

we ran an undergound newspaper circulated around town called "the last thought" and scribbled patches on tablecloths in restraunts procaliming the new loves and life and all the cool river peace the world could eve need. we dropped fliers from building tops proclaiming the revolution of taking ones self back for ones self of finding the self. we drizzled hope to every last (lost) soul and meant it.

it could all be okay if we only told it right only looked at it right. beatnik holy writing school we could teach the world to see with eyes closed minds pointed at dawn it was all so surreal.

it only takes a single grain of sand to move the world and we had twenty pounds of paper limitless energy flesh on pavement breath that never faded words flapping in stacks around town. wherever you could find the observer you could find us words scribbled to print photos rendered useless by bad phottocopy print techiniques that fell within our donation only budget bucket.

we went to a journalism conference at a college a few hours away and scrawled "fuck censorship" across the walls. we wrote stories on teen suicide and pregnancy for our high school papers. we talked communism and drunkeness. i interviewed a marxist, she made out with a bum, we would see through any skyline put between us and total understanding.

we were rebles in the way that only children can be. we had notions and brainstorms that concoted fantasies of leaning the world off it's axis and breinging us all closer to the ourselves to each other.

we had long lovemaking sessiona in the darkroom waiting for the fix to set in listening to chopin and talking about the importance of having the courage of ones convictions.

we tripped at school. three. four. five days a week. gave each other indian sunburns and cast aside our perrs' reckless notions of popularity or partying in exchange for true freedom.

it was all so beauitful then.

then the summer came and bled to fall and i dropped out having been accepted to college even without a diploma and we didn't talk for a few years. sporadically she would call and come visit me wherever i was whatever i was doing.

later i saw her while i was working at the record store, she was applying. she was dressed like peggy sue meets donna and talking about rockabilly.

i heard she went to school int he northeast somewhere.

one day i called around a list of old numbers to track her down (this was four or five months ago). when i finally reached her she was conked out on a nod barely conciouss enough to breath. she was popping pills almost every day and her roomate told me her arms looked like a trainyard.

i got a call a month or two ago that she was in the hospital for an OD. i sent flowers and tried to call a couple times, then i don't knwo what happened. i lost track of her. i lost her. the world lost her. the world lost bright shining eyes and hope falling like rain and the desire to bring to life the life of things. she could make it all seem okay.

in my life i've lost more than my share of friends to time or wrong numbers, put a feww too many beneath the ground, but of all of them, she is the one i think about when the sun beats down so hard the soles of your shoes melt to the cement. she is the one i think of when it's hard to sleep. i miss the way she tilted her head when someone said something odd and the look of excitement she got whenever something controversial was going on in the world.

she wanted to set the world on fire. now she just wants a fix.

but that's not what i think about when it hink about her. i think about dark rooms and dropped pages from rooftops and stacks of our shitty little newspaper stacked on top of observer racks. i think of the look on her face when she woke up and realized she had another day to change the world.

she changed my world. i hope that's enough.

2002-11-18 | 12:26 p.m.
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