Driving home towards the looming mid afternoon moon I give witness and spread invective, the lockdown traffic surprisingly lively in this ghost town suburb, the blue sky brightness belying the bite of the ice toothed wind. There’s little evidence of the holidays spread through the old apartments and the humble houses, a string of lights, a manger scene. Just the squalor of a small Bay Area adjacent town, suffering from the usual effects of mismanagement and the dimwitted collateral of the Chicago School. Homeless folk shuffling through the shiny winter sun, their cart and bundles kept near at hand. It’s my hometown, the sort of hometown that you leave and never return to, the sort of town that was never home at all.
I smoke on the porch of my childhood home, holding court with ghosts and regrets, claiming space simply because it’s where I am. The moon slides through the naked limbs of the city planted tree, a relic of the bygone days of civic concern for parks and nature, a granter of summer shade and perches for birds. The homeward crows assemble their forces, their sleek beauty begetting a fixed dominion in my soul. I am a disciple of crow and coyote, student of the ones before elder and ancestors, servant of the first kingdom. I am of the ragged company, the discarded and the dissidents. The losers and the forgotten of your world and my own.
The moon clears the treetops, its majesty unaffected by the delving and the disarray. The icy breeze sips warmth from fingertip capillaries, knuckles stiff in fingerless gloves, numbed touch even number as I tap away at the screen with its slippery symbols and ersatz keyboard. All meat and mystery I fade and shiver, my old joints complaining along with the song of wound and the terms of the latest injuries. It all slips away. The notion of home, the hope for love, the claims of companionship as much ash and dust as any of my dumbassed dreams. Left to my obsolete devices and my own ineptitude, I stumble along with the same old songs, habitual words and natural wonders. Darkness falls on me like night upon T-Bone Burnett, the moon’s flat affect, and this husk touched by ancient flames and the star tossed mystery. I give witness, loitering in the bitter bite of the cold impassive night.