Byline: Hanging with Gods

Buford Youthward
stockcap@hotmail.com

I'll admit I often use fire for effect.

I can't help it. There's something about the flame that I need to tame. No, I'm no arsonist, at least not in the physical sense. I just have an urge to find out why nothing great ever spirals out of control, only inward upon itself.

Contentious content aside, I still aim to romance the universe like a Roman. I seize the night or what's left of it like a frothing beast out to best beauty. I taste temptation in a tempest and stash all my hope in a desire wrapped in a fantasy.

It's the politics of a knucklehead who places marketing over policy. Sin, sacrifice and symbols sift across the landscape despite a great human appetite for perceived wisdom. I am not wise because of what I know but because of the mistakes I've witnessed from afar.

The older you are the more you live in the past. We have all become slightly changed, educated by pain, tricked by time and hoodwinked by youth.

My suspicion is unreasonable, my cause not probable, my soul has been through the fire and back. I've faced the demon, fucked the angel and now hang with gods in a paradisiacal glow.

I've been waiting for the decline of the primitive and the triumph of virtuosity. Listening to the latest indie rock, I wish these kids would take lessons on their instruments. I hate it when art school students think they can make music or graffiti.

Alone, interrogating my conscience, I succumb to the mountain. I disrobe innocence, profanity, danger and intelligence only to find dignity fully clothed in the emperor's new clothes.

She's no one-hit blunder. She's got it figured out. Dignity is the most beautiful of all the attributes. She's no dumb chick. She holds no warehouse full of resentment. Her feeling is deep, her reactions meaningful.

I honor her very presence by watching the sparks fly after slowly striking a match.

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