Transition

Everything must go. I cannot picture it. Anyone want a keyboard? I think the thing cost $1500. Back in 1995. And an acoustic guitar. The language is leaving me. Which I suppose is just as well. One learns anew, one learns again, one learns what he presently needs to know.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This is an old saying which most people never really get. We just keep wondering why.

It seems that life's various punitive damages are conspiring more and more to corner me. Everything falls into line with the progress of an increasingly apparent fate. At last it becomes not a matter of choice but of necessity. I wonder if our personal destinies are foregone conclusions from the outset, freedom only an illusion, process pressed upon us, not an invention but a conceit.

Transition

It is easily the biggest change I have made in my life. It bears no resemblance to anything I have done before. I may as well be trading in everything that is known of me. And yet, life goes on, the old empire stands and functions, rocked to persistent slumber by the daily routine. Habit has no knowledge of revolution.

Where have they gone--
so many,
so beloved--
gone to keep council
with the lonelier planets--
and all their secrets
kept henceforth silent--
I will not hear so much as a whisper
again--
My heart is the loneliest
planet of all,
colder yet for my distant sun,
for flicker sharp
yet never warm--
a word devoid of once said love

Where have you gone
whose love was forever—
where have you spent your life
after all?
And what did you mean
by using words
reserved for better things
than lies?
Yet even now but speak
one time
let one last lie be comfort
And for the sake
of promised things
restore the truth
to lost illusion