the lost ones

(with thanks, as always, to jacky B.,"a dark glass", for pointing me here).

Heart.
Still.
Untrue.
For you.

"I want to know how you fell. Tell me all the details!"

My heart?

"Who cares about your heart!"

What would you know? The ghost songs of a life. I nearly became a white man, but didn't. (The Allama once wrote that he was saved from becoming an infidel by reading Wordsworth. A bit dramatic, but there you go!). Always the intrusion of the comical in what turned out to be, ultimately, a falsely serious life.

How I nearly scored a goal for the Colts. The rain pelting down, washing away the image of Danny on the sideline, screaming to me to go on my own. Beaten the (offside) trap. The slanting rain, the moment opening up before me...

Or how I nearly made the right decision: put my name down for philosophy, only to renege and take the cowardly get-out clause. The loss of nerve, the swerving at the last moment to safety.

What about the time you were nearly seduced by a married woman? Get out of here!

On the dark side of the moon, the other you lives, the one who chose 'right' instead of 'left'. But why the moon? In California, right now, there's a tramp or a millionaire , who has my name, and less of my fate. Closer to home, in the walled city, a slobbering drunk lies heaped up in a corner, wearing my stolen coat, dreaming my dreams. And in the mirror, I sometimes catch a glimpse of that other me: confident, bragging, years of success under his belt, his hands resolute, knowing, his eyes dazzling, his heart not in need of another...there he is,just as ready to fall, the old fool.