by M. Blake

MORNING

"No more, not now,” he says, and the alternative is to shut himself in a room or leave the house altogether. Either way he will be looking at the trees, the sky, the quick moving animal life, looking for color to overwhelm him, and appreciating the waste-free movements of survival. He asks for no other demands on his attention, as his anger dissipates. When he senses the essential, there is never anger. A sadness perhaps, amusement, wonder; he is reassured in some way. It is something he can count on when the all too human pettiness, the trivial, drives him away like a swarm of winged pests.

AFTERNOON

Manic Hendrix, his electric soul shrieking behind the psychedelic flourish of the peacock, something dark from the oppressed, a guitar wielding warrior fierce in his performance, but knowing, in the end, it is just that, a brief connection with his audience, and then, after hitting his peak under the lights, the inevitable drop into that darkness, just Jimi, falling in the troublesome noise of his mind, but looking, always looking, no doubt hoping, until everything was extinguished.

NIGHT

An open window, and the cold night air sends him somewhere else, briefly, in association. The cold sharp air penetrates his cozy dullness, and suddenly, thrillingly, he is elsewhere. It is a moment when he is touched by his mind and memory, something quite vivid from the past, affecting, and yet sad at the same time in that time enters into it. A stark glimpse of how little is ever accomplished, and how much is just chance and circumstance. And all it takes for it to come back, so poignant in its clarity and surprise, is a breath of fresh air, and perhaps a scent of something.

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