Where I'm At

Where I'm at

That black summer of 1995
It was the year
Of no happy ending
22 years later
And it still puts me into
A very dark cold place.

An eternal emptiness
Where I don't dare smile
Lest someone arrive
To take that away again.

This is not a pretty place,
or life
I laugh from sheer madness
I suspect.

Perhaps I hide the madness well?
Anyway, you know me
The person I stand outside in.

In this mask
This brave face hiding
Nervous dust.

It was the year that put me...
Here.
Where I am aware,
Kind of late, to my sorrow.

Loved ones and music
is what matters
Nothing else really matters.

My art will survive me
If there is a here left
After the smoke and fire
Has cleared..

Art is our bid for immortality
We must face death
With courage and curiosity.

Notes from underground
From an
Undiscovered country.

To be honest
Never had the courage
To write it down
But the time has come
I need to tell my story
What really happened.

On June 25 1995
The first day
my heart was sent
To Exile.

-Will Dockery

Exile

Exile

Christmas morning 1995
about six months
into exile
still some hope
and a whole lot of love.

Delivery of presents
Santa myth trashed
for my children
not my design
against my will.

Got the okay to stop by
I step in from another world
bearing gifts
smiles to mask
my smashed heart.

Memory and dreams
this may pass
but the final statement
the final fuck off gesture
to me.

Proof that I was no longer real
I no longer belonged
was not that
I didn't get a gift
not a single one.

But when I asked her
she said she had
given him a shirt.

Black day
December 25 1995
I sucked it up
smiled at the kids
with holiday toys
tried to hide
my nightmare of pain.

Sat in my old spot
north side if the sofa
smiled a goodbye
and walked away into the bog
the moor
to Shadowville,
already dead inside
never to return.

-Will Dockery

Star Child Memory

Star Child Memory

Snapshot of a moment
an outdoor poetry reading
in early Spring 1996.
Glimmering stars
and looming moon
through the gloom.

Passing through
in that cavern
of concrete, glass and brick
off Broadway.
I join the poetry reading
already in progress.

There's a hush in the air
as we approach.
Star Child and her friends
standing with me
on the sidewalk.

Glimmering stars above us
Springtime
constellations.
Poets sit in a circle
in the alley
behind Bazaar Earth.

In those early days
so late in the game.

But I couldn't remain
back then
I had to keep on moving.
I told them they couldn't get
high enough
to float with me.

Star Child twinkled and tweaked
skipping by me
in that spangled night.
Stopping at the parking meter
waving goodbye.

-Will Dockery