I like marching bands, banjo’s and reggae.  You can’t have the blues and listen to any of those musical styles.  Give me a marching band any-day, all snap, shine and precision, with a thundering drum cadence rumbling and tickling against the walls of my belly.   At the head of it all stands the drum-major in his crisp white uniform with a red stripe running down the seam of each of his pant legs, he blows his whistle and all that sunshiny brass flips into playing position.  Everyone is wearing tall red hats with white feather plums—-black leather oxfords covered with white spats step out in unison.  It’s as if the lines of musicians are a single living entity moving as one.  The sidewalks are lined with little children sitting on their fathers shoulders as moms sit in lounge chairs smiling behind sunglasses. Teenagers stop their horsing around to stop and stare in amazement as the big tubas trail behind with their foghorn “um-pa’s”.  A parade ain’t nothin but a fancy walk put on display for common people like you and me.  I feel the sun on my face—I feel myself being drawn to you——–I wonder what you think of me—we should’ve known better—-

I ain’t waiting for life to happen to me, or for other people to be interesting, cause that can be one long fucking haul, too many people are emotional sloths.  I ain’t waiting for someone to love me either.  I’m gonna love as many people as I can, cause it’ll help me sort out the hungry raw ones from the heart numbed.  I’ll know when I find another to love, cause I won’t have to put up with all the extraneous bullshit that comes with loving most people—-most people don’t want love, they want someone that they can put in their little box and carry around with them so that they don’t feel so lonely.  Its the people who don’t know who they are or what to do with themselves that are the ones who are the most boring, self-absorbed and needy.  They exchange romance for stability and replace adventure with routine, but as far as I’m concerned, life without danger is like love without letting go of yourself and everything that goes along with that—–strange but true, ya gotta to give it all away to find what’s left behind in the ashes, cause that’s where the soul resides, and burns——

They’ll open that little box now and again to see that you’re still in there, never changing, always waiting to support them, when what they really need, is to be told that they stick in your heart like a weathered barbed wire fence post.

They’ll demand that you condone their little version of the world and they’ll expect you to inhabit their soap opera fantasies like a wind-up soldier in some smarmy Harlequin Romance plot—drama exaggerated, a lifetime fabricated out of strategic gamesmanship—-all played out in some empty, echoey theater—–as for me, I prefer silence to bullshit.

Ya see, I got my own world, a place you couldn’t even imagine, cause you never liked parades, reggae or banjo music.  If you haven’t already guessed it, I don’t believe in soul-mates.  As far as I’m concerned, if you can get a good ten year stretch out of a relationship without becoming the perpetrator or the victim of a homicide, then you’re doing pretty damn well.  I’m a realistic romantic (realomanitic) I know that love is real and that love is precious, I just don’t particularly believe it is eternal—-all beauty is evanescent—-fleeting—  Enjoy it when you find it—— and partake in it for as long as it lasts—–cause brother, once its gone, its dead and gone.

People spend way to much time doing things they don’t want to do with people they don’t like. They carry on saying a bunch of useless bullshit that doesn’t amount to anything and then carelessly let opportunities slip by without saying what they really feel. Lots of people are love stingy or too scared to reveal themselves to others, not me, I’m fucking odd-tistic, I always say what I feel, its a great filtering system, if I piss you off, great, I won’t waste my time on you in the future.

Most people want to be unique, but to be unique you have to be different, and to be different you have to be willing to appear stupid, strange or weird—being yourself, being authentic, this takes huge courage.  We’ll seek one another out, the ones who mumble nervous prayers, wringing out sweaty palms, the ones who have suffered and been dangled deep into the dark well of sorrow, hearing the echoes of life’s sad songs, to know such things, to understand such things—–these now, are the only ones for me, the artists, the poets—the fools—-

Much of the time we’re anonymous extra’s passing through in the background of someone else’s unspooling life.  But tonight, I’m out front and in your life, the spark behind that smile, and I love the way your eyes follow me, like they’re the lens to some old black and white cinematic love story.  And everything you say is interesting and connects with me.  I want it to always be this way, cause I’m weird and intense like that—–and only you know how I always go one step to far—-and I wonder—-are you willing, or more importantly, are you still capable of plumbing those mysteries beyond the far reaches?

Don’t fool yourself, someday we’ll all be long gone with only the foggy memories of others tying us haphazardly together.  But if you remember me and I remember you, then we will be eternally bound together, living in that frozen abyss of yesterdays—

If I were to play an instrument in a marching band, I’d choose the trombone.   Its an unpretentious goofy looking instrument that doesn’t have a lot of buttons or holes that my fingers need to fiddle around with.  I’d march right down the middle of the street with the rest of my band members, sliding that long plunger looking thing back and forth until I find a note that fits just right.  I’m out of step with the rest of the band, blowing on that brass contraption as if it were hot carmel drizzled over those swollen lips of yours.  And if we were still in love, and if you were up to an afternoon of madness with me, I’d have you march right beside me playing a big bass drum.

Its a warm Sunday evening, a breeze carries the scent of corn dogs, cotton candy and all things deep fried and sugary.  Hand in hand, like awe struck children, we take that slow neoned stroll down the midway at the county fair.  At the end of the days festivities the streets are swept of its confetti and we sit together in a big deserted bar and sip on our beers, bragging about how we made such beautiful music. We drink Pabst Blue Ribbon all night long cause its the cheapest and I won’t have to stop ordering us beers because I’ve run out of money, and besides, I don’t want this night to never ever end, or at least not until you dream back into me.

“The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.”

— Oscar Wilde

“I’ve been the fool.

but still…

I was a good fool—–”

—–Mikel (Mckrazi) Diegel