Balcony overlooking the Past
Perilous dance-to music played on a dangerous piano accompanied with some strings and a statuesque pretend blonde singer breathing deeply. Exhaling words written about love from 1933. You know the song, you know it well…
It was just a moment, just one moment… How can such a short period of time have a life lasting effect? Synchronised living, emotions and graduations, in synchronization… How can I feel as you feel when we have not looked into each other’s eyes since that night on the balcony overlooking the Old City. I have loved and been loved since you, yet the memory of you flashes in front of me like a speeding train; so close yet impossible to grasp…
Record player playing a song from 1983 or so, Old City sounds, in my mind, like the prayers from the balconies from another century, in an ancient language, lost and forgotten by all but the chosen few. Aromas of bread baking and coffee brewing, voices chanting, chanting, your hand in mine, lips against mine, heart upon my heart… Lost in time… Forever scarred and bruised… In a small Cafe off of King George or something like that. I still remember your taste… Your perfume upon my shirt, the one you wore that evening in the tent… Nomads wandering in circles, bumping into ghosts from ancient civilizations, scrolls in a cave and broken hearts on the beach.
I question my sense of my past; are my memories true or are those visions simply a movie I watched once long ago? A book read or a song sang? I tend to romanticize what has been and what cannot be again… Yet still I wonder about the lost dreams of my childhood – did I truly yearn for them or was it just another dream I had as I slept, in a seemingly sleepless night, in a moonless summer sky, where the stars do not appear and the moon is unseen.
The sounds of the river outside my window, rushing unceasingly towards the sea only to be swallowed up and diluted in a crowd of strangers who never truly see you for who you are, where you came from and how difficult the journey was. Can they ever comprehend? Can I ever grasp the idea that each of those strangers has a past they had to overcome as well?
In the winter’s cold – the dreary skies can cast an ominous sense of a storm comin’ your way. You are cast aside for the groups of travelers who pass on by searching for the perfect spot to take a picture. Streets empty quickly as the dusk comes upon the city at just before 5 or so – it’s a lonesome visual – the empty streets and the cold dreary skies.
The imaginative ways that the poet excavates emotional turmoil only proves the point that the poet, unknowingly, is his own worst enemy. Creative lightning and thunder bursting in bursts of genius through the mid-summer days and nights, when one should be content, should be at peace – suddenly a leaf falls from an oak tree and the poet is faced with an ache he felt a million years ago….blue skies turn into a dark islands of clouds congregating, thunder is heard in the distance and ones inner dogs are startled and awakened – something is happening and you have absolutely no idea what it is…
So you grab a pen and you use a napkin – you express your emotions and suddenly it’s all too clear…