The disembodied voice proclaims the virtue of another star who discarded life like one more piece of outdated bling, not sparkling with sufficient dazzle when moonlight reached the designated spot at the appointed time in the summer sky.
The car chugs through that part of town still smelling of the bacon fried on the greasy grill this morning, holding tight to the beer and vomit chucked upon the stairs last night or was it possibly the night before?
Its crowded corridors echo the voice of that man who professed cleansing light into these streets .
(did he promise? or did we believe? did he assure? or did we just imagine?)
From his unholy pulpit, without audacity, he blesses now –
not the life of the teen shot down by the law-man with a gun,
but the suicide ringed with riches but living with despair.
And in these sweltering houses, in the thermal shops, on these misty corners, the grocer and the barman and the mother and the unemployed:
they all listen, and they are puzzled – as though he now speaks a foreign tongue.
The unarmed teen disobeyed police orders. Ten bullets showered round him as he died on the street in mid america in light of day!
The suicide broke the same laws for which the grocer’s son and the barman’s brothers and many husbands endured dark prisons and forfeited paths to riches the star has thrown away.
To live with darkness, to live with sorrow, to live with challenge. Life exacts authenticity, endurance.
That we can embrace each light, remaining buoyant until each evening is mere fiction dressed up, displayed and peddled as precious precept: a dream, a mantra, a sharpster’s slogan until it collapses – sodden, sad, shaming, like the suicide or broken promise of champions bygone.
Fanatic Hearts 