Last night I found an ashtray.
It was from a bar in Amsterdam which no longer exists.
The faces of lost friends
And their stories,
Started to pour
Scattered around my head.
Old drink tickets
From clubs whose owner just passed away.
Not even made it to 50.
My generation burned too fast.
So fast you might have missed us.
But the stories are still alive within me.
One day I will tell all your stories.
We lived and loved and fought.
But we bought into Thanatos
We bought into the beautiful corpse delusion.
We killed ourselves softly.
I see perched by my window
A poster from some show decades before.
It’s from another civilization.
One that lived in the moment.
One that didn’t hate its humanity.
Flawed and broken,
But genuinely alive.
All I see is shadows without genius.
Robots staring at blue screens.
I’m afraid I will become like them if I keep it up too much.
The backstage passes from some festival hang like trophies of a bygone age.
A festival is a mock war zone.
The crew is your family and your army.
The memories are those of a seasoned veteran.
Will we see the open skies again?
Cry and howl at the moon again?
Be authentic without fear again?
Will we dare to live?
A will to run for the hills.
Blood pulses and the heart pumps.
Wish for a dawn that cracks my soul wide open.
Pray for a cleansing rain that brings a flood.
Is this it? Yes, this is it.
Ebullient force awakens.
Those who are alive will not be denied.
Yet we must stay that way, or the song of the banshee will call out our names.
It is again the birth of the Sun Son.
It is again that we are at the beginning.
Be born out of love and without cowardice.
Because without love…
Where would we be?