Happy New Year

It was an okay year. I mean, last year; it was alright.

I spent a good amount of it in your homes, as a friend, drinking or smoking buddy, guest, invited and otherwise, acquaintance, forlorn stranger, charity case, homeless bumpkin, that guy who has grass, banange the list is endless but I spent it with you.

I gave up my place of abode at the beginning of the year, the walls did not love me anymore and spent the days hatching plans with the roof to smother me while I slept and nights glaring at me with peeling paint malice and contempt. I could not sleep. The doors would let me out no more but led me down endless corridors where the clocks always struck the hour of darkest night and the paintings came alive. Bronze horses galloping, drums beating, evil eyes laughing, sharp teeth chattering, and long bony fingers peeling off my skin.

So I left and returned to my mother’s house.

I was ashamed; somewhere in my head my ancestors sat before me and tut-tutted. I was no longer worthy to be called your friend or brother for I was just another lazy motherfucker.

Still I deigned to walk among you. I could not be alone for it meant that I would slowly but surely perish, perhaps not in form but in substance I would be less here and more there. So I walked about and saw you from the other eyes and learnt that man is a lonely and scared creature, that all he does is to quell the silent despair that lies deep in his heart. All alone out here, he gathers to himself everything he can find and would tell the story of his life by the mounds of dirt he piles, one on top of the other.

I learnt that you still believe that to have a care is to be weak and in hardening your heart, you fell and lost one.

I remembered what it meant to have a home, to catch the trailing bits of the love you once knew as a child. It is no more now, the one without a price, perhaps it never was but I knew it once and it is still somewhere deep inside of me. I will give it to you, if you let me.

I walked abroad unafraid of you for I was God in my world, and I weighed and measured and found you in need. I saw your fear and felt it run through me and knew that you’d rather it was not near or something you could hear. So I kept quiet and let the cacophony of feigned laughter, disdain, and rage wash over me.

I walked to the forest to find the wild man who went to live a deliberate life and beneath the fig tree we shared fruit. He called me a wild man too, said I was very much him, true to the wood with nothing to prove.

And then I sat with you and broke bread, told you what I saw in my mind’s eye but you did not hear. Your voice louder in your head than shrieking Valkyries drowned out all that did not please. Still I sat, and waited for you to return and listen. I sit still.

I will not give up. One day you will truly know me and then I shall have no fear and you will not be afraid of me too.

Happy New Year people in my life; friends real and imagined, family lost and found, love known and unknown.