It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

by Billy Shears

part the fifth

Winter’s night; the ranch

Rage, Rage against the dying of the light

Dylan Thomas

As these installments are, reflections in some way into the dying of the light, I felt a feeling for the past, an inspiration into the colors of a youthful ambition. We shake the cold off of our jackets and find a way to hide in the cozy corner. Ambivalent and ambient to the free associations we corral. The kind coal warms in the furnaces across this country, fuels of conscience wrestles in the knit, long waiting the sun to be a goddess for the skin. It is odd what we find lost in that desert shop, folded beneath calendars and parking tickets.

I rented a room one time that was above a garage. I froze solid in the evenings, drank heavily while trying to keep warm sitting outside smoking, listening to blues, memorizing quotes of Bogart, Dylan and contemplating the existential meanings forging in my head. I made myself some promises on those evenings, you better believe. Just like I did some ten years before that, some twenty years ago now; that I could come to some reasonable form of dismissal to some of the trying moments up to that point.

It didn’t finish there, so much has come and gone and yet so much still remains to fill the caveats of happiness and serenity. We have pictures and visions to prove to us something greater has become us. The epitome epoch, the shy linearity, the such-much of desire blinding the eyes reasoning us to mistaken identity. People forget that they have the opportunity to make a difference and that difference is in a garnishing of solitude thoughts. The remainder of our lives is to finish those prayers and conclude on those dreams.

This is our manifest. To cling to the matter that we have yet to extinguish in the landscape we entertain.

I don’t mean to ever doubt my life or the people who have been in it. We march to our own music and that music is slumbering in another room that awaits our entry. Our lives are extraordinary because of the emblem we established all those years ago. If measured we would have a difficult time with all that has been forgotten. We remember what happened when we were ten years old, not the grace we embodied picking up fallen features. Meaning becomes history, the misbegotten motif staunch and circumspect, a cruel irony, but nothing we can claim to be the author of in the spec of what is a definition. We are defined by the actions we take, but no the actions we chose.

This is why I ask for folks to listen to how things are said, not what is said. This is why it is important to reason out what we do not understand. This is why we must realize that we have no definition that is not fiction. Do we remain fixated on what we think is happening or what is happening? It is all significant, the sober, somber evening that the sleepy television controls. The stubborn ideals. The quest of what is.

Tonight, I went back and spoke with that kid, drunken, smoking and feeling torn down and asked; didn’t you know it would be like this someday? The answer I got was, sometimes.

We must battle through the dark ages, the unforgiving circumstances and grow beyond the pale of what is overwhelming. I don’t know exactly why I feel like dishing out sentimentally as much as I want to establish a message that I believe in. I think what I see and hear lately is a lack of hope, a reluctance of sincerity and a time to re-evaluate the ground that has been covered individually in success and failure and vividly command a dead reckoning. Hope was in my responses all them years ago fighting against the dying of the light.

My friends, the work is hard and worth it. I look forward to twenty years down the road to see what this wounded lord will do. Tonight was idle. Today was spent. Sadness eddied in some sorrowful news that made me think of if I ever thought about giving up, perhaps. The new years coming can be fraught with founder, but we must remember what is at our core, heal the wounds, forgive the unfortunate, fix something in ourselves and give it away unconditionally, always try to be a friend…

no fiction of fame,

shall blazon my name, all I ask,

all I wish is a tear.

Byron’s The Tear

Born a poor young country boy--Mother Nature's son
All day long I'm sitting singing songs for everyone.

Sit beside a mountain stream--see her waters rise
Listen to the pretty sound of music as she flies.

Find me in my field of grass--Mother Nature's son
Swaying daises sing a lazy song beneath the sun.

Mother Nature's son

Lennon/McCartney

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

By Billy Shears

Part the Fourth

I read the news today… oh man! Bitterness in the air; where is the love? I just got done talking about Johnny Cash, I can’t dig getting in to the battles that are. What we need is peace and love.

I’ve been listening to my favorite station XPN.org and they have been in my head for months, scary in every sense of the word. I heard Led Zeppelin’s Your Time Is Gonna Come today. I couldn’t help but the think about the weary world we live in.

I grant a pause then in the general action.

I submit to my alter egos.

I think back to the time that was, twenty years ago, in the misty motif malfunction of bashful blues and bussing bailment, we join a work in progress that feature film when we asked, well, what’s it gonna be then, eh?

I am going to try to buy the world a coke…

Tonight I want to rationalize peace. I want to put it out of the context of the Christians, the Muslims, the Jewish nation, the Zens, the Buddhists and anyone else with a claim to the supernatural metaphysical world that is tripping along in the universe.

At some point I discovered another world, or at least came back into being with a world that I once knew as a childe. This world was something of script, perhaps paper-hanging or a something that was authentic once but got commercialized and deteriorated into a myth of dancing LSD loving flower givers.

Don’t get me wrong, the message was special, but the means brought out the worst in everybody. Just like all the old prophets, you are best persecuted for what you believe in. Santa, wand your sleigh.

During the time of my immediate freedom, someone asked me if I was happy with my current circumstances. (I know I may be talking in code, but it is what it is). I answered that loaded question with a yea poz yes. I was happy for lack of a better understanding of what happiness was, but I was bound and determined to get there.

But how did I get there? It started with a poem by Byron, called Farewell If Ever Fondest Prayer. I read it out of a book that someone let me look at during a rather uneventful journalism class in high school. I am forever grateful. At that singular moment, I found happiness in the form that I understand now.

Old George Gordon gave me a conduit that I followed to many ends. I filled my excesses to a point that it probably did as much damage as good, but that is what we do. It led me to the path that my spiritual father John Lennon started. I eventually found what started his journey. The best of the best. Those folks who broke the boundaries. The ones who weren’t afraid, as Kerouac said, “The Mad Ones”.

The common denominator was peace and love. Yes, those old hippy terms. But the Beats started it. Jack, Neal, Allen, Lucien and Old Bull Lee (quoting Kerouac). They ran the gamete. They changed the consciousness. This was followed and perhaps even inspired by the civil rights leaders of the times, and the genuineness that folks like Woody Guthrie were singing about.

Of this legacy what remains? Who are our leaders? What has happened to the inspirations that ran from these ambitions? I include every and all from the dawn of time, which is what they represented. Where is the new Renaissance? Who will open up and exclaim the meaning of the words?

Can I walk back into that world and hold up to some of those steady ideals that pushed me out of the womb and into the arms of the fascinating world? And what about you? Are you able to ask of yourself? Can you be exuberant and faithful and resounding? Is grandeur most valuable? Are the sins forgivable?

This world needs a good kicking in the rear. We need people to start to stand up and decide that they want some sanity and normalcy. We will get nowhere with the negative waves… (to keep up with the movie quotes). We can learn the lessons of the past and come back to unite those that have fear and pain and isolation. We are not for isolation, we are for kindness, we are for empathy, we are for the better parts of ourselves, we are for regenerating the best of the best possible aspects of human nature.

Can you feel the inspiration? As Byron said in Manfred, Old man, tis not so difficult to die! Any fool can tell you… as well as any major dude…

This is my recommendation; don’t keep it under your hat. The days of being weary of what you think, see and feel are over. Become part of the solution, take time out to breathe, take some time out to extend your hand to something bigger than yourself. The Blind Watchmaker is sitting on a hot stone laughing at the miscalculation… that is so readily apparent the historians will have a hard time putting it to document.

Are you ready?

…all day long, singing songs for everyone…

(I know George sings it) but have you ever listened close to While My Guitar Gently Weeps? Can you hear where Paul ends and John begins? (in the chorus) We still have things to listen to again and learn.

Whisper to the wind and say that love has sinned (Willow Weep for Me)

I think under the guise of Billy Shears, has love sinned this wicked world?

Will you stand up and walk out on me?

(no links look ‘em up yerself if you want to know more than you know)

© wounded lord literature 2006