2500 miles from you

On a Winter day in 1989. We said our first goodbye. I joined a war to escape your  face. I try to leave the places filled with too many damn ghosts. Now I drink the Irish coffee in Monterey. Write words of the blue eyes girl with the auburn hair, Ileft behind.I sit on the bench where Hemingway drank his whiskey. I can feel his sadness and watch the sea he saw once. The 2500 miles away from you wasn’t enough. I sit on the Fisherman Wharf at the last tavern. Drinking whiskey and eating the clam chowder. I learn what Dante knew. The powerful sea can’t erase the faces and memories of those ladies who open the door to love and make the night come alive.  Those sweet and beautiful Beatrice’s. Can’t be killed off by the whiskey or the sea.

I got lost and confused trying to forget your memory in Reno. I played the tables and drank the free drinks. A beautiful long-legged woman with a mini-skirt leaving nothing for the imagination leaned against me. I felt the warmth of breathe and skin against mine. Her clear blue eyes made me feel weak. When I looked into her eyes. I remembered losing you in some nightmare, re-learning after you left me. All I had been black memory left.

I escaped to New York city. I liked New York city. My weaken spirit took comfort roaming with the insane writer and artist. I -envision Leonard Cohen talking to Joplin on a park bench. Joplin telling Cohen. “I prefer more handsome men, but you will do. We may be ugly, but we have the song.”  New York city is a old place. I like the ancient places where you can read and write your words. I read poetry at a Poetry readings. I told a story of a life falling to self-destruction and dead-end roads. About a perfect face and embrace that left a broken  man.

I returned to Michigan and I found you. You accepted me back and I wrapped my arms around you. I told you. You were the only sweetness a man knew swimming in shit and self-pity. You taught me money was nothing and kiss and warm embrace was the real gold of a gold life.

Life is a circle of joy and pain. Pain and joy. I lost you again. We always had bad timing. You wanted school and nursing. I wanted just your sweet kiss and time.  This time I knew the ending at the start.

Now I roamed the USA highways alone. I have learned life was fair.  Woman can make you feel like the King of the forest or steal away your hope and joy if you allow.  I know today better to be thankful for the attention of sweet woman. Don’t hide out too long. If you become distance and afraid. You may lose something sweet and unforgettable.

Better to have loved and lost than wished you did. Better to know the feel of someone warm and sweet, lighting up the nights/days and your life than be waiting for no-one. Old memories are like ghosts. We must accept them and move on to better places.

I got back to Monterey and now the dark street Poet knew. Life is good, woman are sweet and beautiful and he was near his true love, the sea. He drank his beer and waited for new doors to become wide open.

Dark Poet became the Word-man. He knew now. Can’t write the words without knowing struggle, war and a thousand sweet kisses.

He told the kids. Live my friends. Today could be the last chance for love, the slow dance and to know laughter.

Coyote/John Castellenas
Written in 1992/rewritten in 2014